Forthcoming events

Details on request

(Talk in the Community Hall at St Anne's)

The speaker: David first visited Hong Kong in 1989 and lived there continuously from 1992 to 2024. Since 2009 he has run the Gwulo.com website, providing an online meeting place where people from around the world meet to ask questions, and share their knowledge, about Hong Kong’s history. The site has grown to over 50,000 pages, including over 30,000 photos of old Hong Kong. In 2014 David received the SCMP’s Spirit of Hong Kong award for Heritage Preservation for his work on Gwulo. Then in the 2025 New Year’s Honours List he was awarded the British Empire Medal, For services to Heritage Preservation in Hong Kong.  David is a regular speaker, using photos from his collection to introduce Hong Kong’s history in a way that is easy for audiences to enjoy. He has also published a series of five illustrated books, Volumes 1 – 5 of Old Hong Kong Photos and The Tales They Tell. 

All five volumes of Gwulo's books are back in stock at Amazon UK (this is an affiliate link - it doesn't affect the price you pay but Gwulo earns a small commission from Amazon if you buy via this link)

How have places in Hong Kong evolved since well before the 19th century? Dr Hase will show how its various suburban settlements came into being. Such is a history of immense interest as well as unending fascination.

Since arriving at Hong Kong more than half a century ago, Patrick Hase has been researching its local history, with a particular focus on the market towns and villages in the New Territories. Due to a lack of written documentation for the study of these communities, much of his research was conducted through oral interviews with village elders in the 1980s and 1990s. Hase sought their memories of the villages in their youth, as well as their grandparents’ accounts of the communities prior to the age of high technology, urbanization, and modernization.