Mail, maps, and movies make the Top Ten list for 2009.
#10 - The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) (38,997 views)
This was the one where Roger Moore as 007 visited the British MI6 office in the wreck of the old RMS Queen Elizabeth. Phil explores the locations for this and other scenes in the film that were shot in Hong Kong.
Read more about The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)
The 2009 Top Twenty has a couple more films that Phil documented:
- #13 - Enter the Dragon (1973)
- #19 - Soldier of Fortune (1955)
And he's given many more films the same treatment on his website, Hong Kong (& Macau) Film Stuff.
#9 - The Belvedere, Plantation Road (2nd generation) [????-????] (39,302 views)
It's a surprise to see a page about a demolished house on The Peak get so many views. I guess it's because of the page's comments, talking about the various Taipans' houses in that area.
Read more about The Belvedere, Plantation Road (2nd generation) [????-????]
#8 - Gloucester Building / Gloucester Hotel [1932-1977] (40,610 views)
Not such a surprise to see this one make the top ten. Standing on the corner of Pedder Street and Des Voeux Road Central, the building was a well-known landmark.
Read more about the Gloucester Building / Gloucester Hotel [1932-1977]
#7 - Colonial Postboxes (42,994 views)
Moddsey started this page with a collection of his photos of the old colonial-style postboxes around Hong Kong. He shows us postboxes from Queen Victoria through to Queen Elizabeth II, and everything in between.
Read more about Colonial Postboxes
#6 - Old Maps of Hong Kong (52,624 views)
I love poring over old maps to see how an area used to look. Often they help answer questions - but each answer usually triggers off two new questions!
The page lists some of the ways to view old maps of Hong Kong.
Read more about Old Maps of Hong Kong
#5 - Photos of Old Houses (53,544 views)
This was one of our early discussions about old Hong Kong houses, and the comments have some of the first notes on Gwulo about the St Joseph's cluster of buildings on Robinson Road.
Read more about Photos of Old Houses
#4 - Contact details (57,225 views)
As it says on the tin, the page describes how to contact me. It shows my email address, but encourages readers to post questions and information directly to the website - my email mailbox is overflowing, so my replies to your messages often go out later than I'd like.
Read more about Contact details
#3 - Love is a many-splendored thing: film locations (57,244 views)
If you'd like to make a nostalgic trip to 1950s Hong Kong, this film is hard to beat.
On this page we worked through the main scenes, identifying where they were taken. There was one small disappointment though: we discovered that the iconic scene by the tree was actually shot in two different locations, neither of which were in Hong Kong!
Read more about Love is a many-splendored thing: film locations
#2 - Views along the tram line in the 1950s (88,721 views)
This is a favourite of mine, showing photos that were taken along the tram line, laid out in the order you'd see them if you were riding a tram from west to east.
I get a certain geeky pleasure from it, as it is different from most of the pages on Gwulo.
This Top Ten page is the usual type. I chose all the photos for it then manually inserted them into the text. This page will look the same forever, or at least until I next edit it.
But the list of photos on the Views along the tram line page is different. It is re-built each time a reader visits it, by telling the computer to "fetch all photos that were taken in the 1950s and are tagged tram, then show them in order from west to east". Every time a contributor uploads a new photo which fits that description, it automatically appears on the Views along the tram line page.
So when I first created the page I guess it showed 20-30 photos taken along the tram line, but today I counted 120 photos.
See the Views along the tram line in the 1950s
#1 - FAQs: How do I ... ? (100,116 views)
FAQs or "Frequently Asked Questions" aim to provide answers to the questions that readers often ask, and also give tips on how to get the most from this website.
Read more about FAQs: How do I ... ?
If you'd like to see more of the top pages from 2009, here's the full list.