Key Takeaways
Most visitors to Hong Kong in the 1970s or eighties only image the fabled Kowloon Walled City from the line as their 747 performed ahair - raising 45 - level banking turnon its approach to Kai Tak Airport . As overcrowded and haphazard as much of Hong Kong seemed in those day , Kowloon Walled City , as viewed from above , stand out starkly as a claustrophobic island of densely constructed chaos .
On the ground , Kowloon Walled City ’s reputation as a outlaw opium den run by crew kept most tourists away , but for topical anaesthetic and the rarified plucky outsider who embark in , they found an otherworldly urban enclave buzz with life .
The Most Densely Populated City on Earth
At its peak , an estimated 50,000 hoi polloi go in Kowloon Walled City confine to an domain incubate one - one-hundredth of a square mile ( 0.026 square kilometer ) . That made Kowloon fence Citythe most densely populated city on Earthwith the equivalent weight of 1.9 million residents per square km compared to Hong Kong ’s overall density of just 6,700 resident physician per square kilometer .
Known to local anesthetic asHak Nam , the " City of Darkness , " Kowloon Walled City partly deserved its dark repute . At street level , no sun sink in the narrow-minded , snaking passageways lined with dripping , jury-rigged plumbery tune and drop bundles of electrical cables . And gangs like the infamous Triads did operateopium densand whoredom mob in the tail , both literal and effectual .
But grant to those whoactually make out Kowloon Walled City , the teetering high - rises were also home to a tight - cockle community of hardworking families , countless bungalow industry , kindergarten classrooms , rooftop pigeon race and some of Hong Kong ’s well fish ball soup .
We speak withFiona Hawthorne , a London - based artist who spent eight years of her childhood in Hong Kong and give in her adventuresome 20s to sketch life inside Kowloon Walled City . Her drawings and memories of the now - crush metropolis are the subject of two books , " Drawing on the interior : Kowloon Walled City 1985 " and a children ’s Christian Bible called " The Extraordinary Amazing Incredible Unbelievable Walled City of Kowloon . "
A Walled Fortress Becomes a Squatters' Paradise
First , an foreshorten history . In 1842 , after losing the first Opium War , China ceded a part of Hong Kong to the British , but construct a walled fort across the Kowloon Bay to keep a close-fitting eye on the enemy colony . The Chinese fortress , value only 700 feet long and 400 feet full ( 213 meters by 122 meters ) , was call off Kowloon Walled City .
Suffering another loss in the second Opium War in 1860 , China was forced to give up all of Hong Kong to the British , but decline to hand over the symbolically significant speck of land within Kowloon Walled City . When the two sides signed an 1898 treaty give the British restraint of Hong Kong for 99 year , the Chinese insist on maintain ascendency of just one place — you judge it , Kowloon Walled City .
Abandoned by the Chinese armed services , Kowloon Walled City became a magnet for refugees and squatters in the former 20th hundred . During World War II , theoccupying Japanesetore down the city ’s wall for material to build up the nearby Kai Tak Airport . After the warfare , when the British find control of Hong Kong , the government tried in vain to straighten out out the squatters inside Kowloon Walled City , which numbered several thousand , but was meet with resistance and even riot .
The uncertain legal position of Kowloon Walled City — not technically part of British Hong Kong , but ignored by mainland China — made it a squatter ' paradise . In the fifties and ' 60s , there was a grammatical construction boom inside Kowloon Walled City with buildings rise within the footmark of the quondam fort . Wood abode were sandwich between brick and concrete flat like a game of Jenga , stacked higher and higher until a maximum limit of 14 stories was enforced to prevent landing airplane from scraping their wings on rooftop television antenna .
By the time Hawthorne and her family arrive in Hong Kong from Northern Ireland in 1970 , Kowloon Walled City was a solid block of buildings that once began as item-by-item structures but had evolved organically into a single , labyrinthine megastructure with decade of thousands of residents .
Life Inside Kowloon Walled City
Hawthorne had heard of Kowloon Walled City as a tike in Hong Kong — mostly about how dangerous it was — but did n’t abuse inside the imposing metropolis until she was an 18 - yr - sometime artwork student in London .
In the former eighties , youthful masses could get devote gigs as couriers on external flight , and Hawthorne jump at the chance to fly back to Hong Kong . A friend there knewJackie Pullinger , a Christian missioner working with drug addict in Kowloon Walled City and invited Hawthorne to see the " City of Darkness " for herself .
" As soon as I walked in , I just have a go at it I had to draw it , " says Hawthorne . " I found it visually so compelling and unlike anything I ’d ever seen . "
Hawthorne let in that architecturally , Kowloon Walled City is literally " glowering , " with apartment building list against each other and blocking igniter from the " street " below , which are more like narrow , corrupt lane .
" There was no establish - in plumbing or electricity , so you have these ' Blade Runner'-style pipes and tube-shaped structure and electric cables running in all focussing , water dripping from air conditioners and clothes hang out to dry , " says Hawthorne . " A lot of Hong Kong had a crowded , disorderly look to it back in the day , but Kowloon Walled City was all of that to the extreme point . "
But within those claustrophobic confines was a vibrant neighborhood . Street stall hawked dim amount , fish Lucille Ball soup and roasted meats . Machinery clanked and seethe from flat - sized factories specializing in metal fabrication or molded plastic doll parts . Unlicensed doctor and tooth doctor set up shop beside cafes and sporting house . And up on the rooftop was another world entirely , a hodgepodge of gardens and garbage dump where children play among a forest of telecasting antennas .
That first flying sojourn left Hawthorne hungry to feel more of life inside Kowloon Walled City . Two years later , she win a scholarship from a local television set station to spend three months in Kowloon Walled City drawing and even take with a bulky 1980s - manner VHS camera .
During those three month , Hawthorne live alfresco of Kowloon Walled City , but drop most day inside outline the portraits and street scenes now featured in her books . A young man named Sam , who worked with Jackie Pullinger , was Hawthorne ’s unofficial template , take her inside factories and introducing her to local families . Even with her limited Cantonese , Hawthorne matte welcome and never witness a tinge of the criminal natural process and force for which Kowloon was notorious .
" It was considered a ' no go ' area guide by the triplet full of law-breaking and peril , " say Hawthorne . " There are dateless lustful chronicle about Kowloon Walled City , which seem to have increase now that it ’s operate . I find that thwarting , because my experience there was very dissimilar . "
Decades subsequently , disappointed by the negative legacy of Kowloon Walled City , Hawthorne sought a way to use her drawings to " bring back the joyfulness " that she feel among the families who live there and the children who play there . That was the generation of her children ’s Bible about Kowloon Walled City .
The Walled City Is Now a Park
In 1987 , just two years after Hawthorne ’s visit , Hong Kong authorization harbinger that Kowloon Walled City would be demolished and turned into a public common . house physician dissent , but as China organise to retrieve sovereignty of Hong Kong , regime officials perform a nose count of Kowloon ’s residents and supply them with money and resource for relocation . In 1993 , the wrecking balls started quash the once - infamous Walled City to rubble . The demolition was complete in 1994 .
Today , if you visit Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong , you ’ll find a sprawling unripe space sate with pagoda and pond , and a table - size plate model of what once was the most densely populated smudge on the planet . Hawthorne would be let down that the Hong Kong Tourist Boarddescribes the siteas " a beautiful garden featuring maintain artefacts from the former Kowloon Walled City — a Formosan garrison which became a lawless enclave for fleer and vicious gangs through the twentieth century . "
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