You're invited: David will give a talk on 2nd November

I'll show a selection of my favourite photos of old Hong Kong, and tell their stories. The venue has a good projector & a big screen, and I'll bring along high-resolution scans of the photos so we can zoom in to see their detail.

The talk is arranged by the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), as part of their series of regular talks. Here's their announcement:

Photographs of Old Hong Kong and the Tales They Tell
Visual Arts Centre  • Friday 2 November 2012

Gwulo.com is a unique web based digital archive of photographs and documents concerning the history of Hong Kong. While sometimes mistaken for the slang word, "gweilo" it nevertheless roughly means “ancient or old-fashioned” in Cantonese.

The website is the brainchild of local history enthusiast David Bellis who posted the first entry on the site in February 2006. Since then Gwulo.com has grown to its present size, which by August 2012 comprised 11,000 pages. They include 6,000 photographs, 1,800 places, 800 people and 1,300 wartime diary pages. Popular topics included in Gwulo are old photographs of Hong Kong and researching family history. The big attraction with Gwulo.com is that it is an interactive site, a ‘friendly place’ where people can share what they know about Hong Kong. As Bellis says,

      “A lot of the photographs on this site would otherwise be sitting in drawers somewhere; this is a way of preserving them and sharing them with a wider audience”.

Following a very popular talk last year, David will once again be speaking to the RASHKB about Gwulo.com’s unique collection and the vanishing Hong Kong they record. 

Speaker: Mr David Bellis
Date/Time: 6.30 pm Friday 2 November 2012 
Venue: Centre for Visual Arts, 7, Kennedy Road, Mid-Levels, HK
Booking: Booking is advised
Charge: Members, $50. Non-members, $100.

To book your place:

• If you're an RAS member, please use the booking form sent with the recent email: "Events of Interest - October/November".
• Non-members are also very welcome - please complete this booking form, and mail it with your cheque to Mr. Michael Broom (address is shown on the booking form).

I hope to see you there,

Regards, David

PS If you attended last year's talk, I hope you can make it along this year too. Don't worry, you won't have to sit through the same stories again - I'll use the same format, but show a different set of photos.