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Kowloon Walled City

Author: Ink-Stained Wretch

It was torn down in 1993, but, at its peak, the Walled City was something wholly unique among the urban slums of the Earth. Existing in a legal Twilight Zone, it was an unregulated no man's land right in the city's center -- a dozen or more storeys of ramshackle buildings that housed, at its peak, over 30,000 human beings in an area that was only 100 meters x 200 meters. The cops wouldn't come into the place and the "services," such as they were, were improvised by the inhabitants. The water came from wells they drilled into the earth below the city, and the electricity was stolen from the mains. Unsurprisingly, it became a hotbed for vice -- a center of activity for the gangsters of the "Triad" societies, who ran the prostitutes, the drug trade and the red hot mah jongg gambling tables. Because of its unique legal status, it was also a hotbed for illegal dentistry, of all things. Poorer residents of Hong Kong couldn't afford the dentists who had submitted to the strict British licensing system -- so dentists from mainland China slipped across the border and set up shop in the heart of the Walled City's unregulated markets.

The history of the place is bizarre -- a reminder of how the West's encroachments on Asia has left lasting scars. It started over 200 years ago, when British merchants were looking for outlets for the vast quantities of opium they were harvesting in India. China was a ripe market. Initially hawked as a remedy for diarrhea, opium slowly began to spread in popularity as a recreational drug across all classes. For the British merchants, it became a vital tool in their goal to upset their trade imbalance with China and to pry the empire wide open. Up until the advent of the opium trade, China exported goods but showed little interest in the goods the West had to offer. Its tea, silk, raw goods and luxuries had to be paid for in cold cash -- in fact, in real money, silver scrip that could be redeemed for precious metal. But as opium became a vital commodity, merchants traded it directly for valuable goods -- and they ignored the human cost of the widespread addiction that was afflicting every social strata of the country. China attempted to outlaw the importation, but dock officials were easily bribed.

Finally one official, Imperial Commmissioner Lin Tse-Hu, decided to draw the line. As untouchable as Eliot Ness, he shrugged off all attempts to bribe him and publicly burned 20,000 chests of opium at the docks, scattering the ashes at sea. He penned an impassioned letter to Queen Victoria, inquiring why a substance outlawed in England should be freely -- and illegally -- traded by her licensed merchants half a world away. But the English weren't about to knuckle under to Chinese law and chose to interpret Lin's actions as an act of war. China was no match for the British Navy's technological superiority. They quickly took Hong Kong Island. The Walled City was quickly turned into a fort and armed with cannons to defend the peninsula above Hong Kong Island from further invasion -- but it was already too late. China would be forced to sign the first of a series of imbalanced treaties with the west. And eventually, the Walled City would be part of a tract of land ceded to the British after further hostilities. The sloppily composed agreement failed to clarify the Walled City's fate. An island of China in British-controlled territories, it was eventually abandoned by China in 1899.

However, a tenacious group of inhabitants refused to leave. Slowly, the new identity of the Walled City began to take shape -- an anarchistic, lawless zone that found its own sense of peace and order in the territory's heart. Its last vestiges as a military fort were destroyed after Japan invaded during World War II. The bricks of the fort became the foundation for the Kai-Tak airstrip -- eventually the site of the International Airport in the city's center, famed for being nestled amongst skyscrapers so every descent and take-off felt like a terrifying brush with mortality.

In the wake of the war, refugees flooded in... and ultimately, the gangs took control. In one of the great ironies of history, the officially established fort that was supposed to be the line of resistance to stop the importation of opium had turned into a lawless slum that was now the crux of the city's heroin trade.

The law finally began to seep in sometime in the late 1970s. In its final decades, the gangs and the worst aspects of its criminal reputation were rooted out. After its fall 14 years ago, it was converted into a park -- featuring an exacting recreation of its 1841 fortified walls. An island of tranquility in the heart of Hong Kong's bustle, this spot that was once packed with humanity, the densest urban environment on Earth, is now barely used or noticed by the City's residents.