home Schengen The real city of anarchy in China is Kowloon. How did the walled city of Kowloon live?

The real city of anarchy in China is Kowloon. How did the walled city of Kowloon live?

Kowloon Walled City was the most populous place in the world throughout the 20th century. De facto being part of Hong Kong, it was not subject to the laws of any country. Complete anarchy reigned on the streets of Kowloon. 20 years ago, this shameful stain on the reputation of the British colony was finally demolished and now all that remains is a story rich in amazing facts.

The history of Kowloon Fortress began about a thousand years ago with the construction of a small fortified village to manage the salt trade. It is known that in the mid-19th century, when the territory of Hong Kong was transferred to Great Britain, China retained the walled city of Kowloon to exercise control over the British.

Previously, a real fortress wall actually rose around Kowloon, but during the Second World War it was dismantled by the Japanese, and the building materials were used to expand the nearby airfield. When Japan surrendered, the question of Kowloon's territorial affiliation again arose between the Chinese and the British. But since no one wanted another conflict, the issue was never resolved.

From that moment on, the fortress city was virtually out of control. The population of the area began to increase at a catastrophic pace, mainly due to refugees from China, as well as various rabble: thieves, drug addicts and criminals. Rapid, uncontrolled construction of new buildings began, turning Kowloon Fortress into a tangled labyrinth of many interconnected buildings. By the end of the 1950s, Chinese triads ruled the roost in Kowloon. Mafiosi founded many brothels, casinos and drug dens here, which the majority of the local population had to put up with.

Infographic showing interesting facts about Kowloon Fortress (in English). Click on the picture to see a larger version:

By the early 1980s, Kowloon's population had tripled. In a limited area, new high-rise buildings continued to be built and old ones were completed - until the microdistrict turned into a gloomy monolithic labyrinth. The courtyards disappeared. The streets, which had become narrow corridors, were illuminated 24 hours a day with humanitarian aid lamps. Electricity was stolen from city networks. Slops flowed through open channels, garbage was thrown out of windows, literally on the heads of neighbors. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of the labyrinth, the height of the area could not exceed 14 floors due to the nearby airport: right above the roofs of the fortified city, planes maneuvered to land at the local airport.

Surprisingly, despite the fact that the area received the nickname “city of darkness,” its residents were happy with everything. And despite the lack of such basics as sewerage, safety and sunlight, many have fond memories of the tight-knit community of Kowloon.

In the 80s, French photographer Greg Girard did a great report on Kowloon, here are some photos:

Photo: Greg Girard

August 15th, 2013

I’ve already (like you probably) seen this photo many times and even had a rough idea of where this place is and why it’s like this, but after digging deeper I learned a little more. I will share with you...

Not a single photograph of Kowloon Walled City, taken by tourists at one time, can convey the true appearance of this “city”. Most of all, Kowloon resembled a communal apartment, in which in the late 90s of the last century... 50 thousand people simultaneously lived!

The history of this strange structure began many hundreds of years ago, when one of the Chinese emperors decided to build a small fortress on a coastal piece of land to protect against robbers. The location for the fortress was chosen near one of the nine mountains that rose on the peninsula. (Actually, the word “Kowloon” is translated as “nine dragons” and, most likely, this name referred specifically to the nine mountains). The fortress received a similar name.

After the death of the emperor and the coming to power of another dynasty, the fortress fell into decay, lost its significance, and its only inhabitants were two or three dozen soldiers led by an unpromising officer, and bats that bred in abandoned premises. It must be said that the stern warriors guarding the forgotten outpost did not even imagine what luxurious living space they enjoyed in comparison with their descendants.

... True, not for long. The treacherous British first signed a lease and then seized the fortress by force.

However, having rushed inside, the British were severely disappointed: dirty, smelly streets, dark, gloomy rooms, rats and seven hundred Chinese scared to death - that’s what greeted them in the fortress. The British gave up on Kowloon and set off to complete the construction of promising Hong Kong.

Since then, the fortress acquired the status of “untouchable” - formally it belonged to the jurisdiction of the Hong Kong authorities, but in fact, Kowloon and its inhabitants turned out to be of no use to anyone - neither the British nor the Chinese government.

The Kowloon Fortress stood, and around it the infrastructure developed rapidly, modern houses and skyscrapers were built.

After the end of the war, Kowloon returned to China and bandits, drug dealers and ordinary people who once lived there began to move in. Thus, in the 1970s, the place became a paradise for mafia groups. The population grew at an incredible rate and by the beginning of the 1980s it amounted to more than 30 thousand people. In the early 1990s, this figure had already grown to 50 thousand people, and this with an area of just under 0.03 square kilometers, so the population density here was 2 million people per 1 square kilometer. The population density in London is currently less than 5 thousand people per 1 square kilometer, and in modern Hong Kong this figure is about 6.5 thousand people.

How did they all fit there? Very simple. The already cramped streets were lined with closets, and additional buildings were erected on the roofs. As a result, Kowloon began to look like a huge anthill, 10-12 floors high - the famous St. Petersburg courtyards-wells look like chic boulevards in comparison with this “city”. Residents of Kowloon moved from place to place on the roofs, deftly avoiding hundreds of satellite dishes stuck here and there - it was faster and safer this way. The police didn’t show their nose here - here you could easily disappear without a trace.

Meanwhile, life was in full swing in Kowloon itself. Hundreds of basement factories produced whatever your heart desired: clothes and shoes, household appliances and drugs. Food was being fried in dirty kitchens, mostly dog meat. In dozens of stores you could buy almost anything your heart desired—from a “Japanese” tape recorder to a woman or a batch of heroin—as long as you had the money. One hundred and fifty doctors (there were 87 dentists), with or without licenses, were ready to cure any diseases (of which, of course, there were plenty in such a place) for a substantial fee, or to send them to the next world.

Kowloon attracted tourists who ventured inside - residents of clean, tidy European cities - with its “dirty” exoticism: children playing among garbage that had not been removed for years, apartments not much different from public toilets, balconies more reminiscent of cages for birds of prey. (Almost all the windows in Kowloon were covered with powerful bars to keep out thieves, making the living quarters even more reminiscent of prison cells).

“Extreme” tourists shuddered past casinos, brothels, literally open drug laboratories, and eateries, fearing not only to eat, but also to touch the dishes that were served there. They carefully set up their cameras to convey all the horror of existence in a city forgotten by the authorities (which, by the way, not everyone succeeded - sometimes there was not enough space to focus the camera), and then with a happy sigh they left this seedy place and hurried back to the civilized , a clean and sterile world.

In addition to sick tourists, Kowloon turned out to be a godsend for directors producing gangster films. There was no shortage of typical shots for filming gangster dens, “raspberries” and other paraphernalia of the shadow world.

Be that as it may, by the end of the millennium it was decided to put an end to the criminal fortress city. By that time, as already mentioned, there were already 50 thousand inhabitants living in it, or rather, sitting on each other’s heads. That's two million people per square kilometer! Not a single largest city knows such a population density. For example, in nearby overpopulated Hong Kong, this figure is about 6 thousand people per square kilometer - more than 300 times less!

At the time, the area where the ghost town was located was still ruled by the British, but the lease was about to expire. Perhaps, before leaving the “apartment” the British decided to restore order in it, and the most “disorderly” place in Hong Kong was Kowloon. They tackled it with special energy.

It is not known where the inhabitants of Kowloon were resettled (perhaps most of them resettled themselves, saving the authorities from the need to build additional prisons), but soon a beautiful park appeared on the site of a terrible pile of high-rise buildings. The builders also restored some historical buildings, such as yamens, the ancient houses of Chinese officials. By the way, archaeologists, who previously dug around the site of the ancient fortress, discovered many interesting finds there, and added to local museums and private collections.

In this updated form, Kowloon opened to new authorities in 1997, when Great Britain returned the right to govern Hong Kong to the Chinese. And now only amateur photographs remind us of the old ghost town, saturated with poverty and crime.

One of the stores in Kowloon.

At night, Kowloon was in full swing with life.

To "Idora" William Gibson there is a stunning image - the Fortress - a city of hackers on the network, a digital refuge for freedom-loving outcasts, an amazing virtual Eldorado. Externally, the Fortress looks like a wild and chaotic pile of pieces of code, scripts, some unfinished images - like a monolithic lump of all sorts of rubbish. Already in the introduction Gibson says that his fantasy was influenced by photographs of the real Kowloon “fortress” (or rather Kowloon Walled City).

“They say it all started with a common kill file. Do you know what a kill file is?

- No.
– A very ancient concept. A way to avoid unwanted incoming correspondence. The kill file did not allow this correspondence to pass through; for you, it was as if it did not exist at all. This was a long time ago, when the network was still very young.
Kya knew that when her mother was born, there was no network at all, or almost no network, although, as school teachers liked to say, such a thing was hard to even imagine.
- How could this thing become a city? And why is everything so cramped there?
– Someone got the idea to turn the kill file inside out. Well, you understand, this is not how things really happened, but how they tell it: that the people who founded Hak-Nam got angry because at first it was very free on the Internet, you could do whatever you wanted, and then they came companies and governments with their own ideas about what you can and cannot do. Then these people, they found a way to release at least something. A small territory, a piece, a piece. They made something like a kill file for everything they didn’t like, and when they did, they turned it inside out.”
William Gibson, "Idoru"

The children played mainly on the roofs, since there was much more space here than in the streets between the houses.

Local people, despite all the hardships of life, tried to somehow equip their homes.

There were small gaps between the houses, which were streets. Local residents mostly threw out garbage there, which could lie there for weeks or even months.

Inscriptions in Chinese.

Another store by a man who clearly loved cats.

The average height of buildings in Kowloon was 10-12 floors.

Very often apartments were combined with factories or shops. In this one, for example, flour was produced.

They cut meat in such unsanitary conditions.

Kowloon - In cramped conditions, but not offended, not seeing the white light. Mega-boomer in Hong Kong, photos and videos.

Guess in one try which country could have the largest and dirtiest communal apartment on Earth?

Apparently, this, namely Hong Kong, is those “little corners” of the huge city that for a long time remained unnecessary either to Britain or to the PRC. Where there is no government, friendship decides everything, and the Chinese know how to be close friends with families, piling up their households, like figures in a “glitchy” Tetris, which keep falling and falling, leaving no voids and without collapsing. But there are only 130 by 200 meters of space...

Remember the science fiction movie Bladerunner? Or the fairy tale "Batman Begins"? Or any other movie where all the intrigue is played out in the hopeless darkness of the wet streets? The image of the city of darkness is not the creativity of the screenwriters. Until 1993, it had a real prototype known as the Kowloon Walled City. For those who lived, worked, traded, and had children in it, it was possible to get a portion of sunlight with a side dish of all the “flavors” from tens of thousands of neighbors only by climbing onto the roof. Adding to the enjoyment was the roar of the nearby airport and the screams of children riding bicycles on the roof or playing Chinese mafia.

The history of Kowloon Fortress began a thousand years ago with the construction of a small fortified village to protect local saltworks from pirates. It is known that in the middle of the 19th century there was already a fort here, from which the emperor’s soldiers vigilantly monitored compliance with the ban on the import of Indian opium by English merchants. Didn't notice...

In 1842, as a result of the First Opium War, the British seized the island of Hong Kong from the empire, and in 1898 several more mainland territories. And since Hong Kong was not given to Britain forever, it was decided to leave the Kowloon fortress to China. However, this was only an unspoken agreement, so a year later the British invaded the fortress, but did not find anything interesting there and left the 700 inhabitants of the fort alone.

The delicate non-interference of the British gave China a reason to consider the area its own. Only in 1940 did the colonists demolish all the dilapidated houses in the fortress and five thousand ragamuffins received new apartments. Then Japanese warriors came and dismantled the fortress wall. In 1947, refugees from communist China poured into the disputed territory, many of whom were various types of rabble, such as thieves or drug addicts. It was not possible to drive them out, and by the end of the 1950s, sinister Chinese triads ruled the roost in Kowloon. The mafiosi founded many brothels, casinos and drug laboratories here, which the majority of the local population, quiet Chinese workers, had to put up with. When the mafia was suppressed and there was no one to fear, the population of hard workers grew significantly and became more cheerful. Here is a photo from 1973. At that time, “only” 10,000 people lived in these houses.

By the early 1980s, Kowloon's population had tripled. In a limited area, new high-rise buildings continued to be built and old ones were completed - until the microdistrict turned into a gloomy monolithic labyrinth. The courtyards disappeared. The streets, which became corridors, were illuminated around the clock with humanitarian aid lamps (as you know, one lamp replaces two police officers). Electricity for other needs was stolen from city networks. Slops flowed through open channels, garbage was thrown out of windows, literally on the heads of neighbors. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of the labyrinth, its height could not exceed 14 floors, because there is an airport nearby. Otherwise they wouldn’t have built something like this.

In this terrible dream, there were over 500 sanitary doctors and fire inspectors who made bags, shoes and food. The chefs from the city of darkness were especially good at fish croquettes; the whole of Hong Kong crunched on them with pleasure, knowing full well how dirty and stinking the Kowloon Fortress was. Moreover, even wealthy areas of Hong Kong came here for dental treatment, because... Almost every tenth slum dweller was a good dentist and worked for a pittance.

Now, in place of the city of darkness, a beautiful park has been laid out, where residents and guests of the now entirely Chinese Hong Kong love to walk in the sun and fresh air.

Video report about the largest slum in the world.

I will tell you about an unusual place in China that has an interesting history. The earliest historical days of this place are lost somewhere in the era of the Chinese rulers of the Song Dynasty, which lasted from 960 to 1279. The last emperor of this dynasty, Bing, did what a simple Chinese emperor should have done: he named nine mountains on the peninsula in southern China, naturally calling one of them after himself. All these nine mountains are called Kowloon (translated from Chinese as “nine dragons”), and one of them is also called Kowloon, oddly enough.

Soon the word Kowloon was used to name an entire region, later the entire peninsula, and then much more. Now it is no longer clear which of these Kowloon is Kowloon, and which one is, in fact, not Kowloon, but Kowloon... After the Song Dynasty successfully collapsed with the death of Bing and the arrival of the Mongol Khan Kublai Khan and his Yuan Dynasty, Kowloon (which is an outpost) was practically forgotten. True, it was more or less further strengthened in 1668, but its role was not very large - only three dozen soldiers were constantly in it.

In June 1898, a document was signed between the then last monarchical Qin dynasty and the British authorities, according to which the latter received the right to establish its colonies in Hong Kong - an area that included Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon Peninsula and a number of adjacent territories.

The only place that the Chinese never gave up was the same Kowloon outpost, surrounded by a protective wall. The Chinese authorities thus wanted to leave themselves a small territory from where they could exercise at least some control over the actions of the colonists - so that they would not get too loose.

During World War II, the Japanese who occupied the area evicted people from the fortress with impunity and even destroyed the ancient wall, parts of which were used to build an airport nearby.

After the end of the war and the formation of the People's Republic of China, the city began to be slowly populated by criminals, as well as refugees from the main part of China.

In 1959, when a murder took place at Kowloon Fortress, the situation turned out to be completely ridiculous: the Chinese government tried to blame the incident on Britain (which meanwhile tried to ignore Kowloon Fortress), and the British government tried to blame it on China.

In the 1970s, the walled city (in fact, no longer a fortress) became a real paradise for mafia groups, drug dealers and drug addicts... Since no one was looking after Kowloon, such people flocked there in the thousands. Although, of course, there were quite decent citizens there who had lived there for a long time and returned after the Japanese left.

The appearance of the houses - or rather, this solid residential monolith. A standard balcony is a “birdcage”, closed on all sides with bars, on which it is convenient to hang various objects, saving space and this is a good way to protect yourself from thieves, of whom, for historical reasons, there are a lot here.

One way or another, the population grew rapidly, and by the early 80s of the last century it reached 30 thousand. The housing issue was resolved simply: more and more high-rise buildings were built there, new floors were added. There was little space, but still there were more and more inhabitants.

In 1984, Britain agreed to recognize the city as part of Hong Kong. There was nothing particularly terrible here: according to the convention, the British had the right to own the territory for only 99 years - they only had to wait for about ten years.

Despite all the hardships, people in Kowloon tried to somehow organize their lives. In this they were especially greatly helped by the sellers of 148 stores, as well as 150 doctors, among whom were 87 dentists - according to data from the late 1980s. This was a particularly popular profession. Even residents of prosperous Hong Kong came to this den of dentists to have their teeth treated.

But in order not to keep this terrible lair to themselves, the colonists decided to simply destroy this city and resettle its inhabitants. The British prepared for this step for a long time and were able to take it only in 1993. The task was not an easy one: after all, by the time this monstrous place was destroyed, 50 thousand people already lived in the city, approximately the same amount that fits in a medium-sized stadium.

But in the 1990s, this “stadium” became a bit crowded. As is easy to calculate, with an area of only 0.026 square kilometers, the population density reaches two million (!) people per square kilometer. Compare with the average population density in London - approximately five thousand people per square kilometer - or in Hong Kong, where it is slightly over six thousand...

However, until the last moment there were more and more people. Sometimes several people lived in one tiny room at once; Sometimes there was another establishment there too. The establishments, however, were not all that wonderful: casinos, brothels, opium brothels, and drug laboratories huddled next to simple shops and eating places.

In January 1987, the Hong Kong government announced plans to demolish the walled city. After a complex process of evicting the people living there in March 1993, demolition began and was completed in April 1994. In December 1995, a park of the same name was opened on this site. Some of the city's historical artifacts, including the yamen building and the remains of the South Gate, have been preserved.

And in memory of this terrifying fortified city, they left this memorial statue, which repeats the appearance of the disappeared landmark.

I also remember a small story on local TV, which was made shortly before the city was demolished.

A small infographic on the “city of anarchy,” as Western journalists called it. It is interesting to see how such an uncontrolled anthill developed.

Photos from Dailymail were used to prepare this post.

Kowloon Walled City is a formerly densely populated, self-contained settlement on the Kowloon Peninsula, Hong Kong.

The Walled City of Kowloon does not have a visible wall around it, but the boundary here is as defined as if it were surrounded by a wall of solid high steel. This is immediately felt in the crowded open market that lines the street in front of a row of dark, run-down apartments - shacks randomly perched on top of each other, giving the impression that at any moment the entire blighted complex will collapse under its own weight, leaving only mountains of dust and rubble.

Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Supremacy.

The Kowloon structure was a monolith on a piece of land measuring 210 by 120 meters, approximately 2.6 hectares. Due to the nearby KaiTak Airport (closed in 1998), the height of the buildings did not exceed 14 floors. All Kowloon buildings were interconnected by a network of passages and formed a giant wall along the perimeter. Most residents huddled in small apartments with an average area of 23 square meters. m. The roofs in the city of Kowloon were full of television antennas, clotheslines, water and garbage tanks; all these obstacles could be overcome with the help of ladders.

Houses grew on top of each other, there were practically no courtyards or greenery. Just a confusing maze of streets.

Between the houses there were small corridors that were streets. Local residents mostly threw garbage there, as well as on the roof, which could lie there for weeks or even months.

Kowloon infographic for the South China Morning Post Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the demolition

It is very reminiscent of the settlement of Shibam, which is also called Manhattan in the desert, which is located in the desert in Yemen.

From an architectural point of view, Colun's analogies can be quite broad, with squatter settlements in general - in particular, the slums of Mumbai and the favelas in Rio.

The streets of Kowloon resemble the streets of Fez - a labyrinth.

The most remarkable example is the Confinances Financial Center, also known as the Tower of David in Caracas. This is an unfinished abandoned office building housing more than 3,000 people. On 45 floors, they created an entire community, with schools, seminars, health centers, and living quarters. You might have seen him in the TV series Homeland.

Story

The history of the Kowloon building dates back many centuries ago. One of the Chinese emperors of the Song Dynasty (reigned 960 - 1279) decided to build a small fort on the coast to protect the area from pirates and manage salt mining. The location for the fortress was chosen near one of the nine mountains that rose on the peninsula. Kowloon gets its name from its eight peaks, one of which is named after the Chinese Emperor. Each peak has its own name: Kowloon Peak, Tung-Shan, Tate`s Cairn, Temple Hill, Unicorn Ridge, Lion Rock, Beacon Hill, Crow`s Nest, Emperor Bing. In the local dialect, Kowloon is translated as Nine Dragons.

After the death of the emperor and the coming to power of another dynasty, the Kowloon fortress fell into decay, lost its significance, and two to three dozen soldiers became its only inhabitants. In 1668 it was further strengthened, but its role was not very large.

Centuries passed. Dynasties changed, the security of the fortress changed. And so, in the middle of the 19th century, on an island not far from Kowloon, the trade and criminal pearl of Asia, Hong Kong, appeared and began to grow. The Chinese authorities, under pressure from the British, leased the island and the entire nearby coast to the British for 99 years, but retained Kowloon. However, in that very convention of 1898 nothing was said about this fortified clause - this point was not formalized. Agreeing to this and suffering for the sake of decency until 1899, the British captured Kowloon. They didn’t find anything interesting behind the stone walls: the area inside was densely built up with low, small houses inhabited by about seven hundred people.

This enclave was somewhat nominal. In fact, the British were in control of the fort. During World War II, the Japanese occupied the peninsula, and the stone walls surrounding the fortress, 4 meters high and 4.6 meters thick, were dismantled to provide building materials for the expansion of the then Kai Tak airfield, which later for many years turned into the main airport of Hong Kong, one of the most dangerous in the world. .

It all started after the end of World War II. De jure, the fortified city of Kowloon, albeit without fortress walls, continued to remain the territory of China, surrounded on all sides by the British colony. In fact, the laws and administration of Hong Kong did not apply here, its residents did not pay taxes to anyone. Kowloon has become a real black hole, a promised land for refugees from the “mainland”. After the end of the war and the formation of the People's Republic of China, the city began to be slowly populated by criminals, as well as refugees from the main part of China.

Tens of thousands of squatters began to flock en masse to the territory of the former fort, taking advantage of Kowloon’s status. The main goal was to start a new life, formally still in China, but essentially in the same Hong Kong, taking advantage of all its benefits. In fact, any free plot within the boundaries approved by the 1898 convention received its own high-rise building. Only a small spot remained relatively free in the center of the quarter, where the yamen remained - the residence of the mandarin, one of the rare artifacts that still reminds of the former history of Kowloon.

According to some estimates, by the end of the 1960s, up to 20 thousand people lived on Kowloon's 2.6 hectares. By the early 1980s, the city had a population of 33,000, and in 1993 there were already more than 50,000.

Life

On the ground floors of Kowloon there is nothing but hairdressers, shops and small handicraft workshops. A stranger will not see anything interesting here. But already at the level of the second and third floors, all the forbidden gates of the world are opened for admitted visitors. Workshops for the production of counterfeit products. Clandestine restaurants that serve dogs and cats banned in Hong Kong, prepared according to traditional recipes. Illegal bookmakers and casinos. A great many brothels. And, of course, drug laboratories, opium dens, dens where you could get a dose of any drug for a few coins. Undercover work in Kowloon was almost impossible: here all the residents knew not only each other, but everything about each other and demonstrated amazing unity, protecting the secrets of their illegal existence. Even the children of Kowloon were silent and suspicious of strangers

Film Kowloon - Walled City

By the end of the 1950s, Chinese triads ruled the roost in Kowloon. The mafiosi founded brothels, casinos and drug laboratories, which the majority of the local population, most of whom were ordinary Chinese workers, had to put up with.

Here, prostitutes stationed themselves on one side of the street while the priest preached and distributed milk powder to the poor on the other; social workers gave instructions to drug addicts squatting under the stairs; What was a playground during the day became a gathering place for prostitutes, their pimps and drug addicts at night. It was a very scary and difficult place to live, which seemed daunting, but most of the people of Kowloon continued to lead normal lives, just like the rest of Hong Kong.

Leung Ping Kwan, City of Darkness

It was only in the mid-1970s that the Hong Kong authorities, who finally decided that they had enough of this and had secured the approval of the PRC government, carried out a massive series of police raids that ended in the actual expulsion of all organized crime groups from Kowloon. Despite its brutal appearance, the area was a fairly calm place in terms of the criminal situation.

The residents of Kowloon also built it themselves. As the population of the area increased, one-, two- and three-story houses acquired new floors. The building density also increased. This is how Kowloon has changed over the decades.

By the early 1980s, Kowloon's population had tripled. In a limited area, new high-rise buildings continued to be built and old ones were completed, this continued until the microdistrict turned into a gloomy monolithic labyrinth. The courtyards of Kowloon were disappearing. The streets, which became corridors, were illuminated around the clock with humanitarian aid bulbs, because... Even during the day, light could not get through the piles of buildings. Electricity for other needs was stolen from city networks. Slops flowed through open channels, waste and garbage were thrown out of windows, literally on the heads of neighbors, an umbrella was a mandatory attribute.

There were about 700 underground factories where bags, shoes and food were made. The chefs from the city of darkness turned out especially wonderful fish croquettes; the whole of Hong Kong crunched on them with pleasure, knowing full well what kind of sanitation there is in Kowloon. Moreover, even wealthy areas of Hong Kong came here to have their teeth filled, because... Almost every tenth resident of the slums was a good dentist and worked for pennies.

The squatters demonstrated miracles of survival and adaptation in an essentially anarchic society. By 1987, 67 wells had been dug.

The government installed 8 dispensers. One was inside, the other 7 stood around the perimeter, providing people with drinking water. Electric pumps delivered water to the roofs of buildings, and from there, through a labyrinth of countless pipes, it was sent to consumers’ apartments.

Mail delivery, 1987

But these important changes for the better, which turned the fortified city into a more or less comfortable place to live, did not in any way affect the appearance of Kowloon. The anarchy here continued, self-building grew, and there was no talk of any major repairs of buildings.

The city of Kowloon eventually became the center of a diplomatic crisis between Britain and China, who refuse to take responsibility.

End

Over time, both the British and Chinese governments concluded that the city had become unbearable. The quality of life and sanitary conditions were far from the rest of Hong Kong, and ultimately the decision was made to demolish the buildings. The government spent $2.7 billion on compensation, and evacuations began in 1991.

Demolition began in 1992-1993. All residents received either monetary compensation for moving, or apartments in modern new buildings in Hong Kong that were growing by leaps and bounds. And yet, the process of destroying this anarchic relic, born almost a century ago, was accompanied by violent protests from the marginalized, who did not want to be deprived of their usual freedom and way of life.

Despite the terrible conditions, lawlessness and crime that reigned there, former residents remember Kowloon with fondness. It was a “City of Darkness” for outsiders, but the local residents themselves lived in a friendly atmosphere, poor but happy.

Culture

Kowloon had a great influence on pop culture; its colorful landscapes were often used for filming. Filmed such films as Crime Story, Bloodsport. And in the cult film Blade Runner, the action takes place in a dark, gloomy and overpopulated Los Angeles, which was largely copied from Kowloon. This city was so overpopulated that residents had to install floodlights on the lower levels because sunlight could not reach them. Kowloon is also featured in video games. In the shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops in the missions Numbers and Shenmue. And in 1997, he got his own game called Kowloon's Gate. The action takes place entirely within the fortified city.

And in Japan, the Kawasaki Warehouse slot machine center was built

Evolution

In December 1995, the Kowloon Walled City Park was laid out in its place, repeating its outline, its alleys bear the names of historical streets in the enclave, some artifacts were preserved, such as Yamen and the remains of the South Gate. And only a memorial with a model of the city cast in bronze reminds of its past.