The Story of Kowloon's Walled City

The Beginning

The land in which the Kowloon Walled City used to sit was originally from the very beginning a customs station since the Song dynasty. Things began to drastically change however following the First Opium Wars in which the need to militarily defend Kowloon was a high priority and was subsequently turned into a fort in the late 1800's. In 1898 however, with the lease of Hong Kong's New territories, the fort was engulfed in British occupied space and in 1899, the Chinese officials were ousted from the fort. The British side however could not gain full control over the city and the Chinese side had more important things to worry about than a piece of land that was so far away from the mainland. Thus was how the context of the Kowloon Walled City was estalished. There was neither British nor Chinese rule over the area and the residents prevents any sort of ousting from the British government. This haven of sorts led to the first stage of the development of the city: The Three Vices



The Three Vices(1948-1987)

The vice industries began in the late 1940's and through the 50's and 60's. During this period the triads, 14K and Sun Yee on had taken over the area due its lawlessness. The prohibition of opium smoking and brothels in Hong Kong led to a rush of the prostitution and drug industries into the Walled City where they were beyond the reach of the law. Many other establishments came into being too under the rule of the Triads including dog meat stalls, gambling halls, opium dens and other illegal practices. There was a lot of permeability between the residents inside the Walled City and the neighborhoods of Kowloon. A lot of Walled City residents worked outisde of the city's confines while others worked inside the city.

There were also a lot of legitimate businesses operating inside the city from butchers and bakers to dentists. Many of the reasons a lot of businesses came into the city was due to the low operating costs from low rent, no need for a permit and most of all no inspectors or codes that needed to be closely followed which allowed for the industries to work more freely.

During the late 1960's and 1970's, people began to enter the city in masses post-war and when the surrounding housing prices were on the rise. Everyone was trying to escape the chaos that was happening in mainland China and took refuge in the sole place where they could be left alone.

The increase in population posed a severe water problem as there were only two wells in the city which had to support all its thousands of residents, and on top of that, these wells were under heavy urban pollution. The solution was to have piping that tapped into the main waterline illegally and pipe it along the walls of buildings and the ceilings of alleyways to their respective houses. The business, operated by the Triads, resulted in leaky, shaftily connected pipes chaotically twisting and turning all throughout the city to not only support the residents, but also the restaurant, factories and workshops. The British government, in the later stages of the Wallled City eventually installed a couple of wells accessible to the city along with introducing electricity into the city which was a formidable task due to its density.

Police raids began occuring in the late 1960's and early 1970's to attempt to flush out the traids. The problem was the police force was so corrupt at the time that officers were more likely to compete with triad bosses for protection money rather arrest them. This was fixed after the establishment of the INdependent Commission against Corruption in 1974. A regular patrol square was assigned to the city in 1980 and the presence began to restrict the vice industries within the city.

There was also an formation of community within the city. A Kaifong (neighborhood welfare association) was established and strived to help obtain better living conditions within the Walled City. They paid for lighting and signage, was the main form of communication between the British government and the Walled City and they fostered a sense of community among residents through social gathering and events.

Demolition (1987-1994)

The 1984 Joint Declaration helped improve relations between the British and Chinese which allowed for the British to exercise full jurisdiction over the city before 1997.

Following two years of secret talks, a surprise announcement was made at 9:00 on the morning of January 14, 1987 by the Hong Kong government declaring the Walled City would be torn down and turned into a park before 1997. At exactly the same moment, the New China News Agency's Hong Kong branch made a similar announcement and expressed full support. Fifteen minutes later the Foreign Office in Beijing echoed the New China News Agency's.

Simultaneously, members of the Hong Kong government's 1200 survey and mapping department accompanied by police swept across the Walled City to determine the occupancy, ownership, and size of all the property in the area. This choreography was to prevent residents from artificially increasing their land speculation by bringing in objects of value. The government also preemptively stationed guards at all eighty-three entrances. The total compensation value given to residents payed by the government was HK$2.3 billion.

The garden (1994-)

By the end of 1987, the government had approved the funds necessary to resettle the inhabitants and to redevelop the area. The last 20 residents were evicted in July 1992. In April of the following year, demolition had begun and in 1994, the government began to build a garden on the site of the old fort. The garden, designed by the Hong Kong's government's Architectural Services Department, had three goals in mind: to provide a place for people to relax, to use the garden to teach visitors about Chinese culture, and to preserve the spirit of the Walled City.

The garden was built as an imitation of an early Qing dynasty garden in the lower Yangzi River style. The symbolic value of the lower Yangzi style represented the highpoint of pre-Opium War Chinese cultural and economic development. It was during the early Qing that Chinese territorial control reached its greatest extent (including the imperial control over Guangdong and the region around Hong Kong). The early Qing is also significant as it was the last great period of Chinese cultural development, free of Western influence. The ASD consciously rejected the Lingnan style of the southern China which better represented it which might have suggested an East-meets-West hybrid. The garden makes reference to a happier and more peaceful time while erasing the decidedly impure history of the Walled City itself, which was so bound up in the anti colonial struggle of the mid-nineteenth century. It also symbolized the impending return to the People's Republic at large and the design is widely reputed to be the home of China's most elegant gardens

Kowloon Walled City Axonometric Drawing

A View into the Culture of the Kowloon Walled City

The residents of the Kowloon Walled City were a hardworking, gregarious people who expressed concern for many issues that arise from everyday existence such as the pressing concerns of education and living conditions. The overall cultural character of the city was one of a tight nit community were residents would help each other as much as possible. An important aspect of the cultural component of the city was the rooftops of the buildings. The rooftops served as a social gathering place. It would be a place of relaxation or repose for the older members of the community while children would use it as a playground. It was a place for everybody.

Perhaps the most important social oasis was the Yamen. Located in the very heart of the city, the Yamen served as a kind of community centre. There were also several religious institutions in the city. During its zenith, it was home to the Fuk Tak and Tin Hau Temples that served believers of Buddhism, Taoism and various Animalist adherents.

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

Water Shortages in the Walled City

The increasing population during the 1960's put a huge strain on the water supply and in itself caused a multitude of problems. Since the buildings in the Walled City were so densely packed and were built without thought for piping, it was impossible to for the water to be piped in underground and through the city by the government. Water was tapped into the main water line outside of the city to individual homes and factories through corroding and leaky pipe lines built by the Triads. These pipes scaled all the walls of buildings and hung above all the alleyways creating a damp, dirty environment. Other businesses also physically went outside the city with buckets to collect water for paying customers but lost its popularity as buildings got higher and higher. Eventually the Hong Kong government installed 8 stand pipes for the city of which only one was inside the city. There would be long lines throughout the day for this one stand pipe where people would wash their hair, vegetables and dishes. Personal pipes also used the stand pipe which was periodically connected to replenish the small storage tanks of food industries.
Entrepreneurs took advantage of this and property owners started drilling wells on their own land in order to profit from water sales. By the time the clearance was announced in 1987, Government surveyors assessing compensation claims identified 67 working wells owned by some 40 suppliers. The more recent drilling had to drill more than 100 metres below the surface, as shallower sources had been depleted. Water was usually first pumped up to rudimentary storage tanks on the City roofscape and from there, a twisted congestion of pipes ran downward branch off to their customers. Monthly charges were anywhere between $50 and $70 per household. There were however many problems. Pressure and pumping difficulties meant that many pumps would only be turned on at set times to replenish tanks which meant only a few hours' supply. The biggest drawback with the well-water was that much of it was undrinkable. It was impregnated with the usual seepage of urban and industrial pollutants and was not even fit to boil. Well water was also inevitably contaminated by human waste which was exited the City via open drains and seeped into the ground. Drinking and cooking water still had to be carried from the standpipes.

Since construction in the city was also linked to the Triads, newer buildings had provision for water supply in order to for them to gain more customers. Once a household was connected to a particlar supplier, there were clear rules of business-client behaviour. Residents would generally pay on time for fear their water would be cut off or their pipes damaged. Whoever would oppose the Triad's monopoly would be blackmailed and attacked.

Those involved in the clearance are reluctant to admit how extensive the main water supply was tapped, but it is unrealistic to assume that 33,000 people and 700 businesses could have been supplied by 67 ground wells alone. The decision was made that it was better to turn a blind eye since to close down the illegal supplies would have caused unnecessary hardship for the residents and bring increased resentment.

Kowloon Walled City

These are the section of the buildings right before it was demolished. It comes from this book

I also came across this thread on a site that I found extremely useful. Images, facts, newspaper articles, videos--it's all in there. Unfortunately some (if not most) of the images are down, but the good news is that the thread is still on-going.

Political Implications of the Counterculture Proposed by Island Adaptations

As an isolated self-dependent functioning unit that is legally part of China but is unconstitutionally ignored by them, the denizens of this highly dense urban centre known as the Kowloon Walled City lived in an enclave of Hong Kong. Abandoned by civilization, the residents of the Kowloon Walled City were forced to create their own civilization from the scraps and leftovers of the urban decay of the surrounding socioeconomic fabric. In a similar fashion, Crusoe was physically expelled from the European Civilization he had been accustomed to his whole life and was forced to deal with the implications of living in his colonial Christian converter mindset as a savage. Literally with only the scraps of his past life, he assembled the wreckage of his ship and built himself more than just a humble abode in his own interpretation of a personal utopia.

In this highly sociological manner, both the Kowloon Walled City and Robinson Crusoe could be said to represent a kind of counterculture movement against the established status quo also known as the dialectic of enlightenment. The two distinct but very similar island adaptations reached their climax but as is the case with most opposition to dominant culture, the fledgling civilization crumbled under the weight of the establishment of hierarchy. Both civilizations also met their demise with the introduction of an invasive isolated force, completely separate from the local biome it encountered. When Hong Kong was returned to the Chinese, the first act of the Communist regime was to show their dominance over a society that run effectively without any form of centralized government by violently demolishing this fragile but important element of human culture. Violently extinguishing the spark of freedom. When a European ship arrived off Crusoe’s “Island of Despair,” he immediately abandoned his utopia. Both civilizations essentially failed, seizing to become elements of unique human existence and instead fell into the decline of mediocrity.

Heterotopias

Robinson Crusoe’s Island of Despair

“...real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.”

Kowloon Walled City

“...crisis heterotopias, i.e., there are privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis...”

By examining Kowloon Walled City and Crusoe’s homes on the Island of Despair we essentially look into a mirror reflective of our own society. These places show certain ideals that exist in a utopian world: the ability to live and achieve happiness with the bare minimums. To understand how to achieve the same ideal we must realize the absence in our reality, which separates the commonplace from the utopian world.

"A heterotopia is a fundamental disorder that silently questions the space in which we live."(Flynn)

http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html