Welcome to Gwulo

Here you'll find over 50,000 pages about old Hong Kong to explore, including over 30,000 photos. The content is added by a friendly community of people who enjoy sharing what we know about Hong Kong's history, and you are very welcome to join us.

Kind regards, David

P.S. To receive more old Hong Kong photos and stories, please sign up for our free weekly newsletter.

84 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Submitted by Admin on

December, 1941.

84 years ago, tensions were high as war with Japan grew ever more likely. On December 8th, Hong Kong's fears were confirmed when Japanese planes attacked Kai Tak, and Japanese soldiers crossed the border into the New Territories. The fighting continued until the British surrendered on Christmas Day.

The end of the fighting marked the beginning of the Japanese occupation, a time of great hardship for Hong Kong's residents. They would have to endure for three years and eight months, until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945 and Hong Kong was liberated shortly afterwards.

What was it like?

Let the people who lived through those times tell you themselves: A new cycle of Hong Kong's wartime diaries has just begun, where a daily email message from Gwulo shows you a selection of diary entries written on the same date, 84 years ago.

If you look at the diary entries from 7 Dec 1941, you'll see that on the eve of war there were still conflicting opinions: Hong Kong's soldiers were being mobilised, but Major Monro had strong doubts, "I don’t really believe that anyone thinks that it will come to anything".

To read the diary entries from December 1941 and beyond, please click here to sign up and receive them by e-mail each morning. It's free of charge, your details stay private, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Sample extracts from the daily messages

Barbara Anslow's Diary, 8 Dec 1941
  • 8 Dec 1941: "I started my birthday with a war. Kowloon bombed about 8AM."
     
  • 10 Dec 1941: "Sid has been wounded. Bullet through shoulder. He told Hospital to phone Mum at the Jockey Club and she went to see him."
     
  • 13 Dec 1941: "We hear rumours that

New on Gwulo: 2025, week 48

Submitted by David on

What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:

General


Places

1920s Hong Kong city scenes and the 1926 rainstorm

Submitted by David on

This week’s video takes us 100 years back in time, courtesy of William Tibbs's photo album from the 1920s.

(If the video isn’t shown below, please click here to watch it on Youtube.)

Thank you to Cindy Putman for kindly sharing this photo album with us.

More old Hong Kong photos & stories:

Topics mentioned in the video:

00:00 Introduction to Lance Corporal William Tibbs and the RASC (Royal Army Service Corps)


03:00 City scenes from around Hong Kong


14:28 Damage caused by the great rainstorm of 1926

New on Gwulo: 2025, week 46

Submitted by David on

Welcome to the new readers who've joined us from my recent talks in Glasgow and Exeter. It was a pleasure to meet you, and thank you to everyone who brought along their family photos & stories to share.

On with what's new and updated on the Gwulo website:

General


Gwulo Website

  • If you've ever made a 'Place' page on Gwulo, please read this:
    • If you've ever made a 'Place' page on Gwulo, please check this list to see if your name appears. If you see your name there, it means that one or more of the Places you created has its 'current condition' set to 'unknown'. Please click on your name to see a new page with a list of the Places affected.
    • Look down the list of Places, and if you see any that you know are currently in use, ruined, or demolished, please edit their page and set the 'current condition' accordingly. Of course if you don't know the current condition of a Place, just leave the 'current condition' set to 'unknown'.
    • This is valuable housekeeping that helps make Gwulo's maps work better.
       
  • Gwulo's books - 9,000 copies sold!
    • At some point in November we sold the 9,000th copy of Gwulo's books. I was worried that once we left Hong Kong the sales of my books would dry up, so it's great to see them continue to sell. (This total is just for the English-language books. I'm looking forward to finding out how the Chinese translation is selling when I receive my first sales report from the publisher.)
    • UK readers, I now have copies of the Chinese translation of my Volume 1 here in the UK. If you'd like to order them (£17 a copy, includes postage within the UK), please reply to this email and let me know.
    • Here are the other shops and online stores where you can buy my books.
    • US readers, unfortunately Amazon UK isn't currently shipping my books to the United States. I believe we'll have to wait for the tariff situation to settle down before they resume.
       
  • Future Gwulo talks
    • Exeter: I'm already planning to give another talk there next year.
    • Glasgow / Scotland: Although Glasgow has a population over four times the size of Exeter, less people attended the talk in Glasgow than in Exeter. We didn't sell enough tickets to cover the cost of renting the venue. If anyone has ideas for how to attract more people to attend a future talk in Scotland, please let me know.
    • Other locations: If you've got a group of people that would enjoy seeing old Hong Kong photos and hearing their stories, please get in touch to discuss setting up a talk.
       
  • Do AI-generated images have a place on a history website like Gwulo?
    • Several contributors have experimented with using AI to generate coloured, sharp images from old low-resolution black & white photos. I believe that these will cause us problems, so I've asked contributors to only upload original images in future, not AI-generated images. Read more about the thinking behind this decision.
       


Places

New on Gwulo: 2025, week 42

Submitted by David on

What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:

General


Places

Subscribe to