Another major early studio in Hong Kong was known as Pun Lun. It advertised its services in the Hong Kong Daily Press on 8th September 1864, shortly after its opening [...]. As Chinese-owned studios tended to concentrate on studio portraiture, it is interesting to note here that Pun Lun stocked a range of landscape views for sale as well. The studio was still in operation in the early twentieth century, and throughout its existence remained a serious competitor to all the Hong Kong-based studios.
The success of the Pun Lun studio encouraged the formation of branches in Foochow (Fuzhou), Saigon and Singapore. The names of the photographers in these various studios are unknown. The Hong Kong studio was located at various addresses in Queen's Road during at least the first twenty-five years of its existence. It survived a serious fire, which destroyed the premises in June 1876, and was still operating at the beginning of the twentieth century. There is little doubt that the Pun Lun studio, at least in Hong Kong, was commercially successful. Its longevity was impressive, and the studio's portrait work was in high demand, judging by the relatively large number of surviving cartes de visite bearing its imprint. Besides studio portraiture, it also produced an attractive series of genre portraits of Chinese types. Only a few of the studio's advertised South China and treaty-port views are known: the negatives were perhaps destroyed in the Hong Kong studio fire of 1876.