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What is Gwulo?
Gwulo is a community-built archive of old Hong Kong history and photography, hosted at Gwulo. Its own welcome page describes more than 60,000 pages and over 40,000 photos, contributed by people who want to share what they know about the city's past. It reads less like a formal institution and more like a long-running group project with a personal voice — the welcome message is signed by David, who also writes the newsletter.
What you'll actually find there
- Historical photographs of Hong Kong, often with dates, places and people identified in the comments
- Pages on buildings, streets, ships, people and events, built up over years of contributions
- Wartime diaries and first-hand accounts, including an ongoing volunteer project to publish Leo Landau's prisoner-of-war diary online
- Regular "New on Gwulo" updates summarising what has been added, plus news from the wartime diaries
- In-person talks, such as recent ones in York and Edinburgh, with more scheduled in Cheltenham and Exeter
Who it suits
If you are researching a Hong Kong family connection, trying to identify a building or street that no longer exists, or writing about the colonial and wartime period, Gwulo is the kind of place where a photo caption or a reader comment can supply the detail a book won't. Casual readers who simply enjoy old city photographs also fit well. The trade-off is that community archives vary in depth: some subjects are richly documented, others are a single image waiting for someone to add context.
How to use it well
Start with a search for a specific place, surname or ship rather than browsing from the front page, and read the comments beneath a photo — that is often where the corrections and identifications live. If you have something to add, the site explicitly invites newcomers to join. For a broader institutional collection, Hong Kong Memory is a useful companion. The free weekly newsletter is the simplest way to follow new material without checking the site.
Who contributes the photos and stories on Gwulo?
Gwulo's old Hong Kong photos and stories are contributed by a community of site users rather than a single author or archive. The welcome note describes "a friendly community of people who enjoy sharing what we know about Hong Kong's history," and invites visitors to join in. The site's host, David, writes the newsletter and organises talks, but he presents himself as one participant among many.
That mix shows up in the content itself. Photos and stories arrive from people with family connections to Hong Kong, former residents, researchers and casual history fans. In the newsletter notes, David thanks attendees at his York and Edinburgh talks and describes the audience as a blend of long-term followers and people new to the site, which reflects the same spread of contributors.
Volunteers also do specific work. The Leo Landau prisoner-of-war diary project is being processed by volunteers, who handle scanned pages in stages, and the newsletter asks readers to email with "DIARY" in the subject line to receive the next page in the queue.
If you want to see who is behind a particular item, open its page on Gwulo and look at the contributor name and any comments, then decide whether to add your own photo or memory.
How can I search Gwulo's archive for old Hong Kong photos?
Use Gwulo's own search and photo sections rather than a general web search. The site says it holds over 60,000 pages about old Hong Kong, including more than 40,000 photos, all community-contributed, so the archive is organised around places, people, buildings and dates rather than a single photo gallery.
Practical ways in
- Keyword search first. Enter a place name, building name, street, or a person's name in the site search. Old Hong Kong material often uses former names, so try variants: a building's earlier name, the district, or the Chinese name in English spelling.
- Browse the photo collection. If you don't have a specific target, browsing photos by category or date range is a good way to find material you didn't know existed.
- Use dates as anchors. Wartime and post-war periods are well documented on the site. Searching a year plus a place ("1945 harbour", "Stanley 1942") tends to surface diary entries alongside images.
- Follow threads, not just results. Community members often attach comments, corrections and extra photos to a page, and those comments frequently contain the best identifications.
A worked example
Suppose you want images of Victoria Harbour in the 1930s. Search "Victoria Harbour" and scan results by decade, then open the individual photo pages: the description and comment thread usually give the date, the photographer and the vantage point. If nothing matches, post a question in the forum — Gwulo's community is explicitly built around members sharing what they know, and identification requests are a normal part of that.
Deciding where to look
| Goal | Best starting point |
|---|---|
| Find a known building or street | Site keyword search |
| Browse without a target | Photo collection by category or date |
| Identify an unnamed photo | Forum post with the image |
| Wartime daily detail | Wartime diary pages, searched by year |
Next step
If you have a photo of your own with no caption, upload or describe it and ask the community — that is how much of the archive's information was added in the first place. For ongoing additions, the site offers a free weekly newsletter, and the same community also publishes books of collected photos and stories. Related collections exist at Hong Kong Memory and the Government Records Service, which are useful when Gwulo's community archive doesn't cover a particular official record.
What books can I buy about old Hong Kong through Gwulo?
Gwulo sells its own series of books, the Gwulo volumes, directly through the site. The pricing links on the site point to individual purchase pages for Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 and Volume 4, so you can buy any of the four titles there rather than hunting for them elsewhere.
These are the site's own publications, compiled from the old Hong Kong photos, diaries and stories that make up the Gwulo archive — the kind of material a reader already browsing the site's 40,000-plus photos would recognise. If you want the books, the practical route is to open the "buy" page for the volume you are missing and order it there; the same menu also offers a free weekly newsletter if you would rather sample the content before committing.
For other books on the same subject, the wider market is worth checking:
- Gwulo — the site's own volumes plus its archive and newsletter.
- General Hong Kong history lists from established publishers and libraries often carry memoirs, photographic collections and wartime diaries that overlap with Gwulo's material.
A useful decision criterion: buy the Gwulo volumes if you want the site's curated photo-and-story content in printed form; look further afield if you need academic histories or titles by other authors.
When does Gwulo's free weekly newsletter arrive?
Gwulo's newsletter is described as a free weekly newsletter, but the site does not state a specific day or time when it lands in your inbox. The page evidence only shows a sample issue dated Sunday, 20 September 2026, submitted at 04:00 — so if you are trying to predict delivery, a Sunday is the best clue available, though one dated example is not a guaranteed schedule.
What you can rely on instead:
- It is free and weekly, so you get a regular digest rather than an occasional alert.
- Each issue rounds up what is new and updated on the site, including old Hong Kong photos and stories.
- It also carries project updates and event notices, such as the volunteer effort to put Leo Landau's POW diary online and the author's talks in UK cities.
If timing matters to you — for example, you want weekend reading or you filter newsletters into a folder — sign up and watch the first two or three issues to see the actual pattern, rather than assuming Sunday from a single dated post. You can join via the newsletter signup on Gwulo.
How can I help transcribe the Leo Landau Prisoner of War diary?
Contact Gwulo's volunteer team by replying to their weekly newsletter email with DIARY in the subject line; they will send you the next page in the queue along with the files needed to process it. The diary is being transcribed in stages—pages from 1942 and 1943 are already done, with 1944 in progress—so new volunteers are most useful on whatever batch is currently open.
A practical next step is to read the already-transcribed pages from 1941–43 first. That shows you the handwriting, formatting and level of detail expected before you commit to a page. Gwulo also publishes the steps required to process a scanned page, which is worth skimming so you know whether you are signing up for typing, proofreading or both.
The site itself is a community archive of old Hong Kong, with over 60,000 pages and more than 40,000 photos, so the diary project sits alongside a much larger body of contributed material: Gwulo. If you want to follow the project's progress or catch related talks before volunteering, the free weekly newsletter is the main channel.
Decide based on the time you can give: a single page suits a first attempt, while a regular slot makes more sense if you want to work through a year's entries. If you are unsure about reading 1940s handwriting, ask for one test page rather than a whole month.
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