Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

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Welcome to Gwulo.com, and over 30,000 pages about old Hong Kong.

If it's your first visit, you might like to use the search box at the top of the page to find what you're looking for, check out the latest old photos, or just scroll down to browse through recent articles.

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Kind regards,

David

PS 'Gwu lo' is roughly how '古老' sounds in Cantonese. It means 'ancient' or 'old-fashioned'.

Pottinger Street and its tunnel

Submitted by David on Thu, 2007-02-01 09:00

You probably know the stone steps of Pottinger Street in Central, but how did it get its name, and what happened to its tunnel?

Life in Hong Kong's ARP tunnels

Submitted by David on Thu, 2006-11-09 09:00
If you lived in Hong Kong in the 1940s or 1950s, or you know someone that did, we’re keen to hear of any stories about Hong Kong’s Air Raid Precaution (ARP) tunnels. The government reports tell us the location, size, geology, etc, but there is very little written about what conditions were like for the people that had to use the tunnels in wartime.

Here are the few references to the tunnels that I’ve found:

1920s Central and Harbour looking East

Submitted by Admin on Tue, 2006-09-12 11:35

Photo courtesy of reader 'moddsey'

Learning Chinese underground

Submitted by David on Thu, 2006-06-15 09:00
Next time you’re on the MTR, how about learning Chinese characters from the route map? Ok, learning to read and write Chinese needs several years’ full-time study, but if you can spare a few minutes at least we can give you a good idea of how the characters came about.

Jubilee Battery

Submitted by David on Wed, 2006-03-15 12:50

This visit to Jubilee battery was to see if the tunnel we’d seen previously was now dry enough to take a look inside. This visit in early March (our previous visit was in May) was much easier, with less undergrowth. Still plenty of red ants though.

On our first visit we could see the tunnel angled to the right for a short distance, before turning left to run perpendicular to the outside wall. This picture is taken from inside the tunnel looking back to the entrance. There are channels cut into both walls at a 45-degree angle – you can see one at the right of this picture, then there is another set nearer to the entrance.

Here are the other photos from this visit: https://gwulo.com/image?field_gallery_tid=26&items_per_page=All

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