Kowloon Walled City: Hong Kong's City of Darkness

Comments · 4K

• GE

  @geographicstravel · 6 years ago · pinned

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• AL

  @alivation · 5 years ago (edited)

  I walked around inside the walled city once in 1986 with a friend. The taxi driver who dropped us off told us it was dangerous and not to go in there but we went anyway. For fear of getting lost in there we walked one block in and travelled along that street which was no more than a metre wide. I remember passing a noodle business with the cook smoking a ciggy while pulling masses of noodles from a huge cooker. No work, health and safety to worry about. Same for the multiple dentist shops we passed all with old, slow speed drills. The sewerage, electricity and water supply were all in pipes suspended by wire just above our heads. There were electric lights, just bare bulbs, strung along above the street too as there was no daylight. When I looked up the sky was just a blue slit, at what looked like miles above. Waste water flowed out of the city from a big pipe at the far end of this street into an open culvert that I assumed emptied into the Kowloon sewerage system. We tried to find a way further in but were deterred by the darkness, leaking water from overhead and a complete lack of orientation to any landmarks with which to navigate our way back out. It was a great experience. No one hassled us or even took much notice of us. It seemed pretty safe to me. It was a scary environment though.

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• OH

  @Ohfishyfishyfish · 6 years ago

  Two very normal words put together sound terrifying: &quot;unlicensed dentist&quot;.

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• LE

  @LeeviHokka126 · 4 years ago

  It&apos;s fascinating to read the comments of people&apos;s first-hand experience with the KWC. Around late 1993, a friend and I, both architecture students at the time, sneaked into the KWC while it was being demolished. Long story short, the place was like a giant 3D ant farm! We went through connecting buildings, explored rooms, looked at photos and stuff left behind (we didn&apos;t take anything, and made sure to leave things in their original places), and got a glimpse of how people could maintain normal lives in an abnormal environment. Our adventure ended when we unexpectedly reached the exposed face of a demolished wall of buildings, and got spotted by the site security guards. They ordered us down and frogmarched us to the site office, where we met with the boss in charge. He turned out to be the demolition project&apos;s Chief Engineer, who, after learning that we were architecture students, very kindly gave us a lecture on the (lack of) structural enginnering of the KWC and how the demolition was being carried out. He even handed out photocopied engineering notes for our learning benefits before shooing us away and telling us not to come back. 😅

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• CH

  @charon2588 · 6 years ago (edited)

  Imagine being so disorganized that an organization of criminals feels responsible for the city.<br>(This was made for almost a year ago, if you have a problem with this. It will be ignored)

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• AA

  @aaronseet2738 · 5 years ago

  Mind-boggling how they managed to organically stack apartment blocks vertically without the whole thing collapsing.

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• KO

  @komerwest3748 · 5 years ago

  The Triad in the walled city was nothing more the a bunch of honest politicians. &nbsp;Honest about everything they did.

  659

• FR

  @frankhaugen · 6 years ago

  It should have been placed on UNESCO&apos;s world heritage list, because it was something that should have been preserved as a special cultural significant place

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• ZB

  @ZBmechanical · 6 years ago

  Well this proves the statement &quot;What some consider hell others consider home&quot;.

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• ST

  @StonedtotheBones13 · 5 years ago

  The fact that the architecture grew organically and on top of each other reminds me of that prehistoric village they found where you had to walk on top of different height roofs to get to the houses in the middle.

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• GA

  @gammosiuwong2912 · 6 years ago

  I was the Royal Hong Kong Police Inspector briefly in charge of the Walled City around 1986. This is a very good portrayal of what it was ; a place I&apos;ll never forget. <br>We once saw an opium den through a crack in the wall and it took days to find our way into it. Acceptable public pathways went through peoples living spaces, lounges, toilets, small windows etc. Electricity was abstracted and often dangerous. There was a cannon beside the primary school right in the centre ; above which there was netting to catch all the discarded rubbish - often filled nappy&apos;s. The rats were the biggest I&apos;ve ever seen. The dim sum was the best. The dentists used real teeth for dentures. The triads knew us and we them - there was a level of mutual understanding. The only other white faces were American Jehovahs witnesses. We used to watch drug dealers through binoculars operate in the nearby public housing estates from the roof while 747&apos;s flew into Kai Tak overhead so close that you could see the passengers faces quite clearly. <br>The people were extraordinary - but then the Hong Kong Chinese are. I still miss them.

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• CO

  @coyotearmory · 6 years ago

  Personally, if love to talk to a kowloon mailman, I bet those guys have some stories to tell.

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