Imagine this: a city where sunlight can barely reach the ground; a city made of hundreds of blocks of tiny apartments haphazardly balanced atop each other, built almost like a living organism; a city attracting anarchists, gangsters, and normal families running from political turmoil alike; a city with no streetways, but a maze of interconnected alleys, tunnels, and cramped stairs; a city closed in itself like a fortress, where local law and government doesn't reach beyond its borders.

Sound like something out of Blade Runner? Well, here’s to art imitating life: Kowloon Walled City was a real place, once the most densely populated city in the world, and it existed and thrived up until 1993, on the outskirts of what the Hong Kong territory, before it was evacuated and destroyed.

The rise and fall of the Walled City

The history of Kowloon Walled City dates back to the Song Dynasty (960BC-1200s). It was a salt trading and exporting post, later becoming a military fort. The famous wall was completed in 1847. After Hong Kong was leased to Britain at the end of the Opium Wars, Kowloon Walled City would be played in a game of political ping-pong for most of its history. China kept it in its official territory at first but didn’t do much with it, later Britain tried to intervene in it before also leaving it aside, so on, so forth.

During the occupation of Hong Kong in World War II, the fortress wall was torn down by the Japanese forces, leaving only the urban settlements. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the British attempted to drive out the people that had settled to live inside the Walled City and were met with resistance (and stones), after which they decided to adopt a “hands-off” policy, again.

Though China and Britain continued to squabble over the decades about who had in fact political jurisdiction inside the Walled City, the truth was that none of them really did or even really tried to establish it.

Kowloon Walled City grew in this political limbo, more and more people arrived, running from the war and political unrest in the mainland, and started to build upwards - since they couldn’t expand outwards due to the British authorities - forming a sprawling mass of apartment buildings right next to each other, constructed not with an urban plan, but in organic chaos, by human need.

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Inside the Dark City

From the 1950s through the early 1970s the Triads, Chinese crime syndicates established themselves in the city and gained almost full control of the brothels, opium dens, and gaming parlors. Royal Police didn’t dare go inside the city unless they were in large groups, and in this lack of intervention from outside government, the Triads took the role of a sort of regulator, semi-city counselors: deciding business disputes, organizing garbage disposals, running pensions, etc.

Starting in the 1970s, however, thousands of successful raids brought the crime rates and the Triads’ power inside Kowloon’s walls under control, though unregulated businesses and tax evasion still proliferated.

In the 80s, the buildings in the city reached their maximum height, 14 stories, lest the constructions got in the way of the airplanes in the Kai Tak airport. The proximity to the airport meant the noise pollution inside Kowloon was high.

Apartments usually were about 23 m², cut through with narrow, barely 2m corridors, where overhanging dripping pipes and hanging wires had residents usually wearing hats or umbrellas to cross the maze of stairs and passageways. Through these passages and stairs, one could cross the Walled City entirely without ever touching the ground, and due to the proximity of the buildings, sunlight rarely reached the lower floors.

Despite its challenging living conditions and its history deeply connected with crime, the vast majority of Kowloon residents were just normal people, and they made the most out of a challenging place.

Because of the extremely close proximity residents had with each other a type of communal culture unlike any other in Hong Kong developed inside the city, full of contrasting aspects of life: neighbors took care of each other’s kids, different families shared meals, grandmothers cleaned the apartments and the passageways they could while parents went to work in other floors. Opium dens existed above the famous noodle stores, strip rooms, and brothels sharing apartments with schoolyards, toy factories and unlicensed dentists sharing the lower floors, kids playing on the roof, and elderly folk sunbathing while addicts got high in the apartments and stairs below.

Until this day, former residents talk nostalgically about the periods of their lives in Kowloon, despite the decidedly challenging living conditions. People remember the experience of watching the sky disappear as they entered its boundaries, the unlicensed doctors, the fishcake noodle soups, children playing in between the antennas, neighbors sharing meals, and babysitting days. Some folk still recall their time in the Walled City as a happier time - "In the Walled City, sunshine always followed the rain."

Destruction and Kowloon Walled City Park

In 1984, the British government decided Kowloon Walled City had been an embarrassing eyesore for too long. A campaign started to evict and relocate the citizens in preparation for Kowloon’s destruction. In 1987, China agreed.

It took the Hong Kong government till 1992 to remove all of its citizens - some of them resisted through to the last day - but by July 1992 the Walled City was completely empty. The demolishing took up almost a year, and by 1994, the Walled City, or Hak Nam, was no more.

In its place, the Hong Kong government built a park - called Walled City Park - where the city used to stand. The sections of the park are named after former Walled City buildings, and parts of the original structure have been kept: the central yamen, the tea house, pieces of the original gates and plaques, and a model of the former city was installed near the Park’s entrance.

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In media

Public opinion and media depictions of Kowloon range from disparaging it as a vice-ridden, crime-thorn slum, a cautionary tale about what happens without regulations, to inspiration for aesthetically engaging “post-apocalyptic” fictional settings, to a romanticized example of organic community and anarchic urbanism.

The truth of it was probably somewhere in between, as attempts to generalize life inside Kowloon Walled City are doomed to failure: its existence was simply too complex for sweeping statements. A difficult but well-loved environment, crime, and community exist side by side. It is undeniable that the living and sanitary conditions weren’t good, and the many illegal activities made it a risky place. But it was also a place that created a community unlike any other; a community that lived beyond the normal rules and laws of government and instead relied on each other, families and neighbors knowing each other in ways it may be impossible for any outsider to understand.

Over the years Kowloon Walled City was the subject of many photographers, artists, and filmmakers - some movies, like 1988 Bloodsport and 1993 Crime Story were even filmed on location, before and after the city was evacuated. Even after the demolition, the Walled City remains in people’s imagination and has become an inspiration for many fictional stories, movies, video games, and more.

A Japanese arcade, Kawasaki Warehouse, that replicated in extreme detail a block of Kowloon Walled City (even some of the garbage was imported from Hong Kong), though it closed in 2019 after 14 years of business. There is also a free website with an interactive map of KWC.

Called an urban anomaly by some and often derided or aestheticized in its dangerous, "cyberpunk" image, its neglect and consequent poor living conditions are unfortunately not that abnormal. Kowloon Walled City, while far from perfect, is a remarkable example of how people can organize society and thrive even in seemingly impossible conditions. It was a place of unique structure, both socially and architecturally.

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