Life in Kowloon Walled City

General City Descriptions
- Streets are narrow paths squashed between the walls of hastily constructed buildings which were constantly growing taller to accommodate the endless influx of immigrants
- As the city grew upwards, it pushed light further out until it was engulfed in darkness
- The air was damp and still, polluted with rancid smells from slimey sewers, the sickly sweet odor drifting from the many opium dens, and the stench of thousands of people crammed together in a confined space.
- Finding work outside the city was discouraging because no one trusted people from the Walled City and they couldn’t produce any qualifications.
- There are a few primary schools in the walled city
- Taking Opium or heroin was common in the walled city
- People set up Squatter shacks wherever they found space
- Multiple families lived together crammed in one-room dwellings. Some even had to sleep in shifts because there were too many people to lie down at the same time.
- A blue film theatre, twelve foot by twelve, drew customers for its fifteen minute sessions which sometimes included a live lesbian show.

The life of Dai Pan
- At age 6, he moved to Kowloon with a friend of his grandfathers
- Lived in 1 room of a large building with another family
- He came home to see his new dad smoking a pipe then passing out for hours.
- He enjoyed strolling the streets and making friends with scurrying rats and playing games with floating rubbish
- Memories of China eventually faded and he didn’t know any better, Kowloon was what he knew to be life.
- He met twelve to thirteen year old prostitutes who were sold by their parents of boyfriends
- When he roamed the streets, he always saw bodies lying in the streets near the drug dens, with needle scars all over their arms from the injection of heroin
- He loved this dark place. He hated what was happening inside but he wanted to be nowhere else
- He joined the triads and became a ‘sai lo’
- He even found somewhere new to live: he moved into a room with his gang brothers in a different but no less filthy, building.
- His survival came to depend upon his Triad activities
- He inevitably got hooked on drugs
- He later got arrested and began to turn to god for protection and guidance