The Globe and Mail (Canada) September 18, 1982 Saturday A nervy tour of Kowloon's Walled City It's fairly safe these days, but the Westerner is wise to take a police escort if he wants to wander in dark alleys BYLINE: PAUL BENEDETTI; GAM LENGTH: 1334 words DATELINE: HONG KONG BY PAUL BENEDETTI HONG KONG IT IS MIDDAY, but there is no light. The narrow, winding alleyway is scarcely five feet wide, the walls are dark and clammy. On the ground, a stream of oily, fetid water winds along the corridor. By the wall a large rat lies dead. Rats are a common sight in this part of Hong Kong. They outnumber people two to one. I walk slowly while my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. The alleys are ink black in spots, with only thin strands of weak sunlight leaking through the maze of pipes and wiring overhead. Inside these corridors it is always night. Every few hundred feet a naked light bulb casts a faint, yellowish light, creating strange shadows. This is the Walled City of Kowloon. An embarrassment to Hong Kong officials, the Walled City is considered a no man's land. It is five minutes on foot from Kai Tak Airport in the heart of the Kowloon Peninsula, across the bay from Hong Kong's central business district, yet it is taboo to Hong Kong residents and most of them never set foot inside the area. Tourists seldom hear of the Walled City. For those who do, the advice is specific: Stay out. One guidebook cautions that a step inside may lead to a journey "from which there is a good chance you may never return." The warning is out-dated and melodramatic. Although the Walled City once was a dangerous underworld and it remains a headquarters for gangs, it is now a fairly safe part of town with a low crime rate. The walls that used to surround it were torn down years ago. Still, visitors are almost bound to get lost in its twilit maze of streets. I am inside the Walled City with an escort - Sergeant Yip of the Royal Hong Kong Police, Kowloon Division. A short, friendly man in plainclothes, he has worked the area for almost a year. On the bright, busy street bordering the city, he tells me to ask him before taking photographs and to stay close to him once we go inside the concrete puzzle, where we will rendezvous with a uniformed patrol making rounds. Police always travel in pairs in the district, whose tunnel-like walls make radio communication impossible. Despite the patrols, police have limited jurisdiction inside the Walled City, but they are the only physical evidence of a Hong Kong Government presence of any kind. This area, the size of a few city blocks and housing about 50,000 people, is in a kind of official limbo. In the eyes of municipal bureaucrats, the Walled City almost doesn't exist. Water within the district is illegally tapped from city pipes. Electricity is provided, but there are no meters or billing. There is no sewage system or street lighting. Only a few residents pay property taxes. Doctors, dentists and businesses are unsupervised and unregulated. The city may be an orderly place, but because police power is limited, it is a haven for organized crime rings, prostitutes and opium dealers. The reasons for this strange status lie in the origins of the Walled
City of Kowloon. In 1841, Britain signed a treaty with China making the island of Hong Kong a Crown colony. Later, the British also acquired the adjacent Kowloon Peninsula. China, however, insisted on retaining control of the City of Kowloon, meaning the walled Chinese garrison on the peninsula. The presence of a Chinese garrison in the middle of a Crown colony offended the sensibilities of many Britons, particularly since the area enclosed by the walls was reputedly a collection of gambling halls, brothels and opium dens. Nevertheless, an agreement was signed in 1889 acknowledging China's control of the territory "except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirements of Hong Kong." A month after the agreement was signed, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and the Hong Kong Volunteers moved in and expelled the Chinese troops. The area still legally belonged to China, however, and jurisdiction over the city became a political and legal mess. Neither side exercized control and squatters moved in. The area became a tangle of huts and sweatshops. Crime flourished. Illegal immigrants, pickpockets, petty thieves or murderers could easily hide in the city's alleyways, where they were officially on Chinese territory and outside the power of the Hong Kong police. As late as 1963, when Hong Kong officials attempted to resettle squatters in the city, China objected and the action was halted. Despite its name, the Walled City has been without walls since 1943, when they were dismantled and the stones were used to lengthen the runway at the nearby international airport. Since the demolition of the walls, the exact boundaries of the city have been obscure. The last official count of the population living and working in the area, taken in 1977, was 26,000, but many estimate the number has since grown to 50,000. From the noisy hustle of Tung Tau Tsuen Road, Sgt. Yip leads me through a narrow opening between two buildings. Within seconds we are in a cramped, gloomy alley, and as we wind our way through the corridors I am amazed at the mole-like existence around me. The houses are cement boxes or wood and tin shacks. I stay close to Sgt. Yip, but several times I almost stumble, unable to see the ground in the darkness. We pass a small factory where two men in undershirts sweat over machines punching out plastic toy parts. The room they work in is about the size of a walk-in closet. In summer, when outside temperatures climb above 30 degrees, these cramped, airless rooms and passageways become a stifling world. I feel an unsettling emptiness about the city. It is early afternoon, but we have only seen a few men and women in the streets. People stare from a window or door as we approach and then quickly retreat as we draw closer. Their curiosity is understandable. A Westerner is a rare sight here, and one with a camera and a policeman is best avoided. Most residents of the Walled City work outside, except for the few who man small textile mills or presses, and the unregistered doctors and dentists whose shops line an entire street here. In such a ghetto you would expect to see dogs roaming about, but the narrow streets are devoid of pets - and for good reason. Young dogs would be snapped up and served in one of the city's "fragrant flesh" restaurants. The only dogs in sight are old mongrels, too tough and thin to eat. We come to a small opening where women are washing clothes around a water pipe. We stop at a one-room variety store. The stooped shop owner, his mouth gleaming with gold teeth, offers me a beer and chats with Sgt. Yip. When we leave I try to pay for the beer, but he refuses, smiling and waving my money away. Farther along the laneways, we come upon a clean, well-run kindergarten and old folks home. The Salvation Army operates both facilities, giving the young and old a change from their hot and cramped houses for a few hours a day.
I ask Sgt. Yip about crime in the Walled City. There is surprisingly little of it, he says. Serious crimes such as assault and murder used to be a major problem, but effective police work and the vigilance of the people have made life relatively safe. Even today, though, real power is in the hands of Triad Secret Societies whose headquarters are in the Walled City. These gangs, often called the Chinese Mafia, control gambling, prostitution and drugs in Hong Kong. Why, I ask Sgt. Yip, do 50,000 people live, and work and raise families in what seems to me like a huge basement? His answer is simple: Where else can they go? In Hong Kong, where an apartment can cost more than in Canada, where the lucky live in cramped government housing and the unlucky in one-room shacks or on little fishing boats, people are happy to have a place to stay. Neither Chinese nor British, the district remains in the limbo created by an ambiguous treaty signed almost a century ago. It is a shadow world, physically and politically - the strangest of urban ghettos. We step back into the bright bustle of Tung Tau Tsuen Road and leave the Walled City behind. It is good to be out. The Washington Post
September 22, 1983, Thursday, Final Edition China's Small Exclave in Hong Kong Is a Forbidding Slum BYLINE: By Michael Weisskopf, Washington Post Foreign Service SECTION: First Section; World News; A29 LENGTH: 863 words DATELINE: HONG KONG
Amid the skyscrapers and other glittery monuments to this capitalist dynamo lies a squalid warren of tenements that looks like a fossil from pre-modern China. The place is called the Walled City, and, in fact, it has been largely forgotten since the Qing Dynasty leased the rest of Hong Kong to Great Britain in 1898. By a historical quirk, the tiny area of 6.5 acres has effectively remained a political no man's land, left to degenerate into a world of such filth and crime that one of its main streets is aptly named Dragon's Saliva. Although the community's high walls were razed long ago, it has been politically and economically walled off from this fast-modernizing territory for almost a century.
As the wheel of history comes full circle, however, the little city within a city that everyone chose to ignore has suddenly become part of a high-stakes political contest involving the future of all Hong Kong. The contest began last year when the Communist regime in Peking announced plans to recover sovereignty over Hong Kong after the British lease expires in 1997. Chinese officials have spoken of creating a "special administrative region" with "Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong" while keeping the current socioeconomic system intact. London reportedly is ready to drop its claim to sovereignty, but it hopes to retain some role in administering the prosperous colony on China's southeastern coast. The Walled City began figuring into the issue last month. Xu Jiatun, Peking's new senior representative in Hong Kong, visited the community's 30,000 people as one of his first public outings. Xu's motives were obvious to political observers here. He went to reassert Chinese domain over the Walled City and to cite it as an example of the kind of self-rule Peking is planning for the rest of Hong Kong's 5.5 million residents, almost all of Chinese descent. Indeed, Xu was quoted as saying he was very pleased with the management of the area by the Kaifong Welfare Advancement Association, a locally selected body. Pro-Chinese observers were heartened by the visit, saying Xu displayed real concern for the Walled City. But supporters of British administration were puzzled as to why Xu chose one of Hong Kong's most blighted sections as a model of self-government. They assumed he was misled by his advisers. "At the end of the day, Xu must have realized the whole thing backfired," a political source said. "He must not have known what he was getting into. Most people feel if the Walled City is a sight of the future, they don't want any part of it." The Walled City became known as Hong Kong's neglected stepchild because of an unresolved wrinkle in the 1898 lease agreement. London originally agreed to let Chinese mandarins continue to run the then-enclosed exclave except when the security of the rest of the colony was in jeopardy. London revoked the right a year later, but China has persistently claimed sovereignty over the years. Nevertheless, no Chinese representative has lived in the Walled City for decades.
The British, careful to avoid a clash with Peking, have likewise kept hands off the area. As result, the Walled City has been left to its own devices. Until Hong Kong police began making cursory patrols in recent times, it was a center of prostitution, opium dens and gambling. Organized crime groups known as triads still are said to operate in the all but lawless community, and it reportedly is a haven for drug dealers, illegal immigrants and unlicensed dentists. Located on the Kowloon peninsula near the busy Hong Kong airport, the Walled City looks like a scene from Dante's "Inferno." Its dank, garbage-clogged passageways form a forbidding labyrinth visited by few outsiders. Buildings are pressed together so closely that neighbors can shake hands through their bedroom windows. Only one space between the crumbling structures is wide enough to admit sunshine. Residents face daily safety and health dangers from rats, open sewers, dangling electricity wires and the steady drip of water from overhead pipes illegally connected to mains outside the community. There is no public water supply. There are no public schools. Fire trucks would be hard pressed to enter the area in an emergency. "Environmentally, it is a cancer," said Victor Ng, assistant officer of the Hong Kong district encompassing the Walled City. Ng said that despite jurisdictional fuzziness the Hong Kong government now sends in police to patrol the Walled City and trucks to pick up trash. There are plans to demolish a surrounding slum of squatter huts so water lines can be extended. "We look at these people as part of us," Ng said. "We feel an obligation to help them." To the inhabitants of the Walled City, political identity is not as important as the pressing needs of daily life. Some residents regard the place as part of China. They hoist Chinese flags on national day and welcome the Communist return in 1997. Twenty years ago, those people appealed to Peking to stop British plans to tear down the Walled City. Communist officials protested, and Hong Kong's administrators backed off to prevent a showdown.
The Globe and Mail (Canada) March 3, 1987 Tuesday SLUM CLEARANCE Death knell sounds for Hong Kong's chaotic Walled City BYLINE: JAMES RUSK; GAM LENGTH: 941 words DATELINE: HONG KONG BY JAMES RUSK Globe and Mail Correspondent HONG KONG Wong Yan pulls herself up to her full 4 feet 3 inches and wags her finger at the Hong Kong official. "I am too old to move now and all my money has been spent on my flat," Mrs. Wong says. "I am very unhappy." Mrs. Wong's complaints are those of anyone who is going to lose a house to Government-ordered demolition. She does not know where she is going to live, whether she will get a fair shake for the money invested in her house or what will happen to the recreation centre for the elderly where she and her friends meet. She is about to be moved because Hong Kong plans to turn an accident of history - currently one of the most densely crowded slums in the world into a park. It is hard to believe that Mrs. Wong would want to stay, even though she lives in one of the few parts of Hong Kong that the poor can afford without turning to public housing. Her house is in one of the worst urban firetraps imaginable, a jumble of buildings where windows seldom let in sunlight and streets are not safe even for residents. A young official who made her first visit to the slum when she acted as a interpreter for The Globe and Mail was silent a long time when asked what she thought of it. "My heart grieves that there is such a place in Hong Kong," she finally said. The Kowloon Walled City, the area to be cleared, must be one of the unique areas in any city in the world. For nearly a century, the Walled City, on whose 2.8 hectares 35,000 residents are jammed, has been a place largely outside the law. Although it has not been exercised in this century, the legal authority over the Walled City - so-called even though the Japanese occupiers of Hong Kong tore down its walls during Second World War for material to extend the nearby airport into Victoria Harbor - may still belong to China. After the peninsula adjacent to Hong Kong was leased to Britain in 1898, China retained authority over a small enclave known as Kowloon City. A Qing Dynasty magistrate landed at a special pier and, without touching British-ruled soil, walked in to dispense justice. The British appeared to recognise the arrangement in an 1898 Order-inCouncil, but threw the magistrate out in 1899. Since then, however, they have exercised power only in criminal law and to keep structures there from encroaching into the western flight path into Kai Tek airport. Consequently, the anarchy of the Walled City has become an example of what modern urban life could be like without the exercise of civil power. No building code has ruled the construction of its approximately 300 buildings, some 15 stories tall. The result is a honeycomb of structures
sharing retaining walls and stairwells in such a way that Hong Kong authorities think they will have to tear it down all at once after the residents are moved out by 1990. Narrow passages and stairs make the city a firetrap. In only a few spots can people walk two abreast. Hong Kong authorities, who have long feared that thousands would die if a fire broke out, say their main worry as they move inhabitants out is that a fire might start in an abandoned flat. It would not be hard for one to begin. In the absence of a building code and internal infrastructure, both electrical lines and dripping water hoses from one of the seven standpipes that provide all the Walled City's water run side by side just over people's heads. The absence of a civil code means that the city has 87 unlicenced dentists, 63 unlicenced doctors and 148 unlicenced business establishments, many of them restaurants that have never seen a sanitary inspector. There is criminal law. Bolstered by a long-standing court ruling in a murder trial, the Hong Kong police patrol the area. A senior officer said the force has succeeded in reducing crime levels from those of the early 1960s, when the area was a haven for fugitives, including illegal immigrants, and for prostitution, drug peddling and gambling. Even so, it is a difficult place to police. To catch burglars, for example, the police must climb to rooftops and peer down the slits between buildings in the hope of catching a thief shimmying up. Hong Kong authorities have wanted to tear the place down since the 1960s, but plans were shelved until earlier this year after traditionally pro-Chinese residents rioted to protest against earlier demolition plans. Although the authorities have not erased the suspicions of Mrs. Wong and her friends at the centre for the aged, most residents appear to have accepted the sudden decision - announced only in January - to tear down the Walled City. Residents who were registered in a snap survey or those who can prove they live in one of the few flats that were empty at the time of the survey will go to the top of the queue for public housing, if they need it. Those flat and building owners who can prove ownership - difficult in a place lacking a land and property registry - will be helped. Businesses will be compensated for loss of trade and their relocation costs picked up. One group of businesses that the Hong Kong Government does not know what to do with is the seven "water syndicates" that operate the piping and hose systems snaking from the standpipes. The most difficult problem faced by the Hong Kong Government, which does not yet have an estimate of the total cost of the clearance although it is expected to be in the billions of Hong Kong dollars, is the unlicenced doctors and dentists. Most were trained in mainland China but lack qualifications to practice in Hong Kong. Some of the doctors may join traditional Chinese medicine clinics in Hong Kong, but the best the rest can hope for is employment as a paramedic of some type, officials say.
The Advertiser April 2, 1988 Saturday City of Darkness SOURCE: aap BYLINE: RODNEY TYLER LENGTH: 1591 words
I F such things were included in the section on housing in the Guinness Book Of Records, the Walled City of Kowloon, in Hong Kong, would undoubtedly merit a mention on at least five counts: it is the world's longest-lasting, largest, most lawless, most dangerous and most overcrowded squat. And if notoriety were quantifiable, it would head that list as well. Of course, now that it is going to be pulled down some are already talking as though they are going to miss it; but you wouldn't want to keep it - except perhaps as a monument to man's capacity to survive in adverse circumstances. It has a nightmarish quality; a teeming, twilight world; a jumble of totally unreal images springing at you out of the gloom. Here, the left legs of Barbie dolls are being stamped out in their thousands by a hissing, clanking machine supervised by a seven-year-old boy, while All I Have to Do is Dream on the radio completes the cacophony. There, in a filthy, dingy room, a dozen chefs in singlets and shorts stand in a row preparing an endless stream of glistening white meringues. And over there, row upon row of ready-to-munch false teeth grimace at you through the window of an illegal dentist's shop. Inside, crouched over a victim, the man practises with impunity.
Turn a corner in the dark, dank, narrow winding passages that pass for streets and there, sitting on its haunches, sleek and as fat as a cat, is a rat munching on a piece of bread. Tread unwarily on the duckboarding beneath your feet as you recoil in surprise and you slide into the open sewer below. Three huge women sit around a table in the doorway to a room, chattering happily as they wrap sweets in paper, shoving the piles of finished product off the table into a box which lies in the festering rubbish in the street. In the gloomy room behind, Madonna singing Who's That Girl? on the radio and the slap of mahjong tiles compete in a strange syncopation. A heroin addict makes his way upstairs for his afternoon fix. In his ninth-floor room which measures three metres by four metres and is living, eating, toilet and sleeping accommodation for him, his wife and his brother - he carefully cooks up his drug in a spoon, siphons it into a syringe, tightens the rope around his arm and starts the search for a vein. Meanwhile, his brother eats lunch, his wife tidies up and Joan Collins shouts at John Forsythe on the color television which stands on top of the ancient fridge. In the darkness and slime an ancient prostitute sits in a doorway hoping for some early trade - though the young girls, the 11- and 12-year-olds, will not be at their posts until night falls. You pass the one-metre by two-metre cupboard on Old Man Street, which is home to the two old alcoholics Ka Lui and Ho Wak. They are into their third bottle of rotgut and feeling no pain. They are happy to tell you how their cupboard used to be the dividing line between the warring Triad factions, the Ging Wu and the 14K, one of which ruled the east side and the other the west. Finally, at the bottom of Old Man Street - past the standpipe, one of only half a dozen in the entire city, where the children come down through the labyrinth and queue with their buckets to get the only available drinking water - you emerge again into the
sunlight. There, only 200 metres away, across the rubble and the new park where the shanties were and the guards used to sit to warn off strangers, is the huge, comforting structure of the Airport Hotel. You turn and look back at the place and you see now what it is: a huge, multi-layered rabbit warren. It is as though it was built to a larger scale, then crunched up in some child's capricious dream to occupy a quarter of the space it should do. Now it measures less than 150 metres square and it is inhabited by an estimated 40,000 people. Not all of them are nice. Nevertheless, the wonder is not that it was built in the first place but that agreement should finally have been reached to pull it down. For, alongside all the dubious superlatives in the record book, the Walled City should also be mentioned as one of the oddest historical anomalies of all time. In 1898, three months after the Chinese signed the deal to lease Hong Kong to the British - the famous lease which is due to expire at midnight on June 30, 1997 - a special Order in Council was issued which gave the enclave known as the Walled City of Kowloon back to the Chinese and gave Chinese officials the right to exercise jurisdiction over it. Two months later the order was unilaterally rescinded by the British, thus laying the way open for a long series of less-than-diplomatic incidents down the years. The common pattern was that the Brits would try to impose some form of order on the place, the residents would promptly complain to Peking and the Chinese Government - of whichever hue - would complain in turn to the Brits, citing the matter of the first Order in Council. The British proposals would then be dropped because of their "politically sensitive" nature - and the residents would proudly boast of their independence and ability to tweak the lion's tail. Things changed rapidly after the war and the Communist revolution. Thousands of mainland Chinese swept into the colony and the Walled City found itself in a swiftly developing urban area. It began to build - upwards rather than outwards - and, in the 25 years up to 1975, the present labyrinth took shape. But there were no laws. Sporadic attempts, particularly in the '60s, to impose colonial rule on the place met with the predictable Peking response. So none of the local building or fire regulations were enforced and structures went ever onwards and upwards with no foundations. Eventually they came to lean on the one next door as the most convenient way of staying up. And while they were leaning there, people thought, why not knock a hole through from one to another and link one 11th-storey passage to another? There was no refuse disposal - only the window. No sewers - only the streets. The electricity was stolen from the official lines outside the Walled City and (sometimes literally) hotwired all over the maze. Water was taken from brackish wells dug under the buildings, pumped by private enterprise up to the top of the buildings then sold for $10 a month to anyone who could buy the piping to reach the tanks. The Triad gangs moved in. Opium dens, heroin trafficking, gambling and all forms of prostitution became rife. The place was turned into an armed fortress of anarchy and, it was said, the Hong Kong police - never anxious to dash into the place at the best of times - fell into the habit of taking thousands of dollars a day to steer totally clear. In its own violent way the enclave policed itself. The two main gangs divided it up among themselves and guarded it day and night against outsiders. With no controls, dozens of illegal dentists and doctors set up - even now there are 100 such dentists in the city. Abortions and other illegal operations thrived in oneroomed "hospitals". Only in the '70s, when the Walled City's notoriety reached far beyond Hong Kong (as did the corrupt reputation of the Hong Kong police) was a real start made to clear up the place. The more public displays of vice and drugs were closed down. The police began to patrol, occasionally and in pairs. The Triad hegemony waned. The standpipes were put in. The open sewers were duckboarded over. Rat poison was put down. Official electricity arrived to supplement the illegal supply and limited strip lighting was put along the walls of some of the principal "streets".
Hong Kong officials also give some of the credit for the change in the Walled City to a 40-year-old British "missionary", Jackie Pullinger, who arrived in Hong Kong 20 years ago with $16 in her pocket and no clear idea of what she wanted to do. Her work among drug addicts - she has cured hundreds of them through a fundamentalist Christian approach involving the laying on of hands and speaking in tongues - is a legend in the colony, to the extent that she is now given limited official help in her work. More importantly, her reputation within the Walled City has grown the more for having cured two senior Triad leaders by converting them, for having challenged the power of the gangs head-on and for never considering anyone to be too low or in too bad a state to merit her help. At the very least she has shown the cowed populace that a light could shine in the City of Darkness (as the Chinese call it). "I have always seen it as the City of Light, not darkness," she told me. "It has been used for violence and crime and greed - it had become a victim city. But I saw the opposite could happen. And it did. People even addicts - used to stay away because the place had such a bad name. Now the worst in the land comes to our room in the Walled City because they have heard their life can be changed there." The first of the 10,000 or so "registered" families will be moved out in April. Such is the nature of the place that everyone knows there are many more unregistered families still living in the city. But just how many is unknown. It will take two years to rehouse everyone and to clear the place out entirely. Then and only then - will they move in to demolish it, because the expert assessment is that it cannot be demolished piecemeal. They reckon it could be spectacular - another superlative for the record book: one push and it could all fall down.
The Boston Globe June 13, 1991, Thursday, City Edition Dooming a slum; Hong Kong's infamous Walled City will be dynamited BYLINE: By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. 2 LENGTH: 782 words DATELINE: HONG KONG
For nine decades the Walled City has festered in the heart of this British colony's sleek Kowloon district, a lawless seven-acre enclave of opium parlors, whorehouses and gambling dens where police, health inspectors, and even tax collectors have not dared to tread. The Cantonese call it Hak Nam, the City of Darkness. It is a ghetto of bizarre history whose 40,000 denizens, ranging from criminal gangs called triads to hundreds of unlicensed dentists and doctors, dwell in perpetual twilight. Ramshackle multistory structures, put up without regard to any building code, tower so high and lean so precariously together that hardly a ray of light reaches the tangle of dank alleys and reeking open sewers below.
All that will change when the enclave is leveled sometime next year. The Walled City took its name from the immense ramparts studded with six great watchtowers that once surrounded the fabulous Qing dynasty home and gardens of the emperor of China's special envoy. China had been forced to cede Hong Kong island to Britain in 1842 and Kowloon peninsula in 1860. In 1898, Britain obtained a 99-year lease on the New Territories, a large swath of adjacent land, but agreed that the walled compound with its small garrison would remain legally a part of China, a sort of foreign embassy. The British broke their promise a year later, driving out the emperor's envoy and soldiers, but under the treaty, the enclave remained Chinese territory. The Japanese, who occupied Hong Kong during World War II, tore down the original wall, but the old name stuck. In 1949, the Communists seized power in Beijing and asserted their right to occupy and police the Walled City. Hong Kong's British governor ignored the demand, but, fearing their enormous neighbor, colonial authorities made no attempt to maintain law or regulate the zone. So, for the people of the Walled City, there would be no schools, no modern sewerage, no electricity, no postal service or garbage collection, and no interference from the state. The enclave evolved into a crime-infested no man's land, the haunt of the triads, opium addicts, cutthroats and home for the poorest of Hong Kong's poor. It also became famous for its cheap dental and medical "clinics," filthy, if thriving, places whose practitioners' low fees reflected the fact that they were unlicensed and, often as not, untrained. Gambling parlors flourished. Illegal abortion centers did, too. Restaurant stalls served up everything from raw snake liver to dog soup. Now, with Hong Kong scheduled to be absorbed into China when Britain's lease on the colony expires in 1997, officials in London and Beijing have agreed it is high time to raze the city. About 10,000 residents of the Walled City have already been resettled, and the infamous enclave will be dynamited into oblivion sometime next year at a cost of $
350 million. Most of the sum represents compensation to owners of buildings and businesses. "That is a cheap price to excise the cancer of Kowloon," said H. T. Lui, Hong Kong's deputy secretary for home affairs. "No one will mourn the loss of this dreadful place." Not true, said Lee Kyung Lam, who operates a tiny bakery inherited from his father and whose family has lived in the Walled City for three generations. "It is true there are many drug traffickers and poor girls who sell themselves on the street. But there is not only badness here," he said. "For many hard-working people with little money, it is the only home we know. I do not want to leave. My mother cries all day knowing we must." A Christian missionary, John Pullinger, who for years has ministered to a tiny congregation in the Walled City, agreed that the enclave is "a dark, corrupt place of horror and shame." "There are murders, and no one asks questions," he said. "The gangs extort the shopkeepers terribly. Yet there is a community of decent souls here just struggling to get on with their lives." Entrepreneurs, heavily "taxed" by the triads, have rigged mile after mile of leaky hose above the narrow lanes to bring water tapped illegally from city reservoirs and sold to residents at a hefty price. Those who protest the prices face beatings and even executions by the gangs, who also control the illegal electric lines. It is the constant fear of violence that makes some Walled City dwellers pleased by the prospect of new apartments and financial compensation. Hong Kong has tried to raze the Walled City three times, but has been thwarted by angry residents supported by Chinese authorities. "The Chinese are with us this time," said a colonial official. "After all, they will inherit this pit if we don't destroy it."
November 28, 1991, Thursday, FINAL EDITION Families evicted from slum city BYLINE: AP SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A3 LENGTH: 404 words DATELINE: HONG KONG
HONG KONG (AP) - Despite protests and threats of suicide, Hong Kong began evicting families from its old Walled City today in a move to clear the squalid sevenacre enclave that is a haven for organized crime, drugs and pro-Communist agitation. Scores of police officers descended on the slum, rousting out unlicensed dentists and doctors, aging prostitutes and the owner of a grocery store. Today's operation, which resulted in 39 families or businesses being evicted from the neighborhood, was the first of a four-phase program to clear the city and turn it into a park.
Most of the original 33,000 residents have already left under a $295 million compensation package. Several thousand diehards remain, seeking more money. The Walled City has been a victual no-man's land since 1898, when the British government expanded its control in Hong Kong to include Kowloon where the neighborhood, now a vast slum, sits. Because the area was the site of a Qing Dynasty fort, the Chinese imperial government refused to allow the British jurisdiction over the place. The Hong Kong government attempted to assert control over the city in 1963 but abandoned the plan after a vehement "hands off" order by Beijing. Hong Kong is now clearing the city, with China's agreement, to build a park. Posters criticizing the government's move flapped from rundown facades. "Down with colonialist running dogs," one read. "Hong Kong government must respect human rights," said another. "I am extremely sad," said Wong Ming, owner of the Pat Tat Crystal Arts Co., who has made keychains and lucite flower balls in the Walled City for 22 years. "My business will die and I'm wondering what will happen to my family." Wong said he would try to hold out for higher compensation before packing up and leaving. Already he's been offered $40,000 by the Hong Kong government to vacate. After World War II, thousands of squatters poured into the neighborhood and it fast developed into a haven for organized crime, drugs, opium smoking and proCommunist agitation. Residents didn't need to pay property taxes, obtain business or medical licenses or get building permits. The place became a vast slum - a maze of dank alleyways lined with spaghetti wiring where the smell of rotting garbage mixed with that of fish, pork's blood and open sewers. Water dripped from air conditioners and open air plumbing.
The Age (Melbourne, Australia) November 29, 1991 Friday Late Edition End nears for Kowloon Walled City BYLINE: HUMPHREY HAWKSLEY SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 7 LENGTH: 143 words Hong Kong police and bailiffs today began evicting people from the Kowloon Walled City _ a jumble of patched-together tenement buildings that have traditionally served as a refuge for Chinese gangsters and drug addicts in the heart of the British colony. In a historical quirk, Beijing never relinquished sovereignty over the area. Britain let China keep a garrison on the site when it leased the colony in 1898. The walled city became a lawless enclave _ a labyrinth of dank alleys that was home to more than 30,000 people. Every time the Hong Kong Government tried to move in, Beijing sent a diplomatic protest. Once, in 1948, Chinese mobs set fire to a British consulate. Now, under the agreement to hand over power in 1997, it is to be cleared in phases and then pulled down. By June 1992, the Kowloon Walled City may well be blown up and then turned into a park.
The Independent (London) November 29, 1991, Friday Empire conquers a fetid colony BYLINE: From ANDREW HIGGINS in Hong Kong SECTION: FOREIGN NEWS PAGE; Page 12 LENGTH: 666 words IN A BRIEF spasm before its collapse, the British Empire yesterday seized one last, tiny chunk of territory for the Crown - a fetid slum crawling with rats, dripping with sewage yet stoutly defended to the last by an angry battalion of Chinese shopkeepers, faith healers and self-taught dentists. The new acquisition is the Walled City of Kowloon, a squalid no man's land riddled with brothels, drug dens, hole-in-the- wall shops and grimy surgeries offering cheap but painful fillings, dentures and gold teeth. Neither walled nor a city anymore, the area degenerated long ago into a dank and often dangerous sanctuary from the law - the only patch of Hong Kong from which the Union flag has never flown, its murky autonomy assured by a quirk of colonial history. When Britain seized the Kowloon peninsula from the Qing Dynasty, hazy wording in the 1898 treaty left Peking a foothold in its lost domain - vague jurisdiction over the Walled City, a tenth-century fort from which Chinese officials and soldiers once ruled. While wary of trying to enforce its claim over the area, Peking was also unwilling to relinquish it. With neither Britain nor China in charge, the Walled City fell under the control of Triads instead.
After decades of legal quibbling and patriotic posturing, both sides agree the anomaly must go. The Walled City, a single block of land next to the airport, is to be razed and replaced with a public park - just in time to save China the trouble of cleaning up the mess when it regains sovereignty over the whole of Hong Kong in six years' time. Enforcing the agreement is the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, which moved in yesterday to help evict the last die-hard residents. ''Nobody should be in there anymore,'' said Terrence Osel, a chubby colonial police officer overseeing the operation. ''The Walled City belongs to the Crown. Anyone who stays is trespassing on Crown land.'' Thousands of residents have already left, accepting compensation from the colonial government and promises of new housing elsewhere. Their apartments have been cleared, their doors chained shut, their grimy, mud- splattered walls plastered with stern official notices: ''NO Trespassing.'' Others, though, have vowed to stay, fearful of losing their homes and wary of dealing with tax collectors, health inspectors and other agents of the law previously kept at arm's length by the Walled City's uncertain status. Particularly anxious are scores of dentists and doctors who, lacking the licences needed to practise elsewhere, will lose their livelihood once they leave. Yesterday, the start of a six- month eviction drive, saw only 11 families dislodged. Many more remain inside, barricaded behind piles of rubbish and rusty iron gates. One man was dragged screaming from his shop; another hurled abuse at police through a loudhailer. Others marched to the Hong Kong governor's mansion carrying black banners demanding more money. The most dramatic act of resistance was staged by a doddery old man in his 70s: he hobbled atop the roof of his 12-storey block and threatened to jump, only to be lured down with assurances that the government's offer of cash compensation - up to pounds 50,000 - might be negotiable. The Walled City's bizarre status, has overturned the usual pattern of protest. Instead
of accusing the British government of caving in to Peking - the usual complaint of Hong Kong's jittery population - the residents of the Walled City accuse Peking and local Chinese officials of caving in to colonialism. ''Have you not forgotten the humiliation of the Opium War?'' asked a poster put up yesterday by the local residents' association. ''Stinking officials have forgotten the interests of the Chinese people.'' Colonial officials and police, however, are unmoved. ''It's sad that people must leave their homes, but the bottom line is they must go,'' said District Police Commissioner Osler. ''I'm not sad to see this mess go. Nobody can be sad about that.''
The Globe and Mail (Canada) February 28, 1992 Friday Inside the walls of a secret city DEPRIVATION"Canadian youngsters might benefit from living in a dark and crammed slum of Hong Kong, says a woman with first-hand experience BYLINE: WENDY TANG; GAM LENGTH: 758 words BY WENDY TANG THE photograph in the newspaper shows a woman protesting against her eviction from Hong Kong's Walled City, a slum left over from the 19th century. The entire district is being torn down. A magazine article describes it as "one of the darkest corners of Hong Kong: an overcrowded warren of poverty, disease and lawlessness." But to its 33,000 inhabitants, the Walled City has been a refuge for the less fortunate souls of an otherwise prosperous Hong Kong. This undoubtedly is why the woman in the photograph "screams in protest" at her eviction. The Walled City is her home, as it was once mine. In 1955, when I was 7, my father abandoned his wife and concubine for an 18-year-old woman. His wife, my "elder mother," sued for divorce, but being a concubine, she had no legal recourse. Even if she had, she wouldn't have known of it. Orphaned at 15, and having tried in vain to become a Chinese opera singer, she entered into concubinage with my father when she was only 17. When my father left, she was defenceless - a woman with no working skills supporting three children, from five to 15 years old. The four of us ended up in the Walled City. Did my mother move there for the cheaper rent? Or was she running away from the pity and sighs of her helpless friends? Poor mother, trying along with my sister to sew gloves for a living by the light of a kerosene lamp. But no matter how hard they worked, it was never enough. Rice cooked with oil and salt, rather than thin rice porridge, was a rare treat. There was no school. My brother and I passed the time by playing hide-and-seek among the linens hung in the open yard of the dyeing factory, or by catching flies for sport. The district's actual walls were torn down decades ago, but the quarter remains a ramshackle firetrap of tunnel-like passages and dripping pipes, all jammed so close together that almost no light filters in. Squeezed into the British colony's Kowloon district, the Walled City was always claimed as Chinese territory by the Beijing regime, which left it in 150 years of legal limbo. Life there was harsh, but I was too young to know. With little to do, I found excitement in work instead. Lining up for water at the street faucet was a joy because it meant that there was something to cook. And I eagerly answered each call of my neighbour to help paste together her cream-filled cookies, because she always rewarded me with one when the work was done. Of course, there were things to dread, like going to the dentist, who was unlicenced and who pulled out my teeth with no anesthetic or even a soothing word. The Walled City, as I remember it, was a world onto itself. There were no smiling and generous neighbours, but neither was there any snobbery to bear. Police would not venture inside the district, but we didn't live in fear of crime or criminals. I was never taught how to be "street wise" -
there were no strangers or rapists to fear. I am sure thieves and criminals were present, but they were there because the Walled City was their home. My one and only dress was stolen through the open window near which it was hung, but my mother didn't make a fuss. She felt it might have been stolen for a "good" reason. Nor was she angry with me when she found out I had sold a silver cup, my kindergarten prize, to a gleeful hawker for two chunky malt candy sticks. When my father regained his conscience and "reclaimed" us, we were happy to leave the Walled City. I didn't look back. I took every opportunity that came my way to make sure that I wouldn't starve again. The 1960s and 1970s were good times and, as I gradually climbed into the middle class, the Walled City receded. Consciously or unconsciously, however, my life was partly molded by my Walled City experience - an experience of sheer survival and deprivation. I had missed the Western youth culture of my time, and the philosophical debates of the hippies and flower children. But, in a way, I believe my young life was more "real." The experience helped sharpen my appreciation and sensitivity for the value and simple joys of life. Now I seldom fail to enjoy a meal, and I'm always excited about things going on around me. When I look at today's teen-agers, I lament what appears to be their shallow sense of life. They take for granted their "right" to food and shelter, and to every electronic gadget on the market. The pride and joy of struggle and achievement have been lost amid the material abundance of North American life. Perhaps every middle-class kid should live in a walled city for a while. Wendy Tang is a writer living in Oakville, Ont.
The New York Times June 16, 1992, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final Hong Kong Journal; The Walled City, Home to Huddled Masses, Falls BYLINE: By BARBARA BASLER, Special to The New York Times SECTION: Section A; Page 4; Column 3; Foreign Desk LENGTH: 892 words DATELINE: HONG KONG, June 11
The Walled City is a colony within this colony, a dark little enclave of narrow, twisting streets and rickety walk-ups that has defied British law and order for almost 100 years. The two square city blocks, just beyond the glittering hotels and fashionable boutiques of Kowloon, have been contested territory since 1899, claimed by both Britain and China.
Over the years both countries have maintained their right to the area, but have seldom asserted their authority. Because of this historical quirk, the Walled City has been a haven for those on the fringes of colonial society -- poor Chinese immigrant families seeking cheap housing, mainland doctors and dentists who set up practices with no licenses, drug dealers and thieves fleeing the Royal Hong Kong Police. (The enclave has no walls now because occupying Japanese forces tore them down in World War II.) No Taxes, No Laws Inside the Walled City, even today, no one pays taxes and everyone lives and works in strange contorted buildings that defy all safety and building ordinances. Restaurants obey no health codes. Cut off from or denied most regular city services, some families still fetch their water in buckets, and pay workers to collect the waste from their chamber pots each morning. "The Walled City shows what people will give up for the sake of money -- sunlight, fresh air, space," said Suenn Ho, an American architect who is studying the neighborhood on a Fulbright grant. A senior colonial government official said: "The basic problem is that the Chinese consider the Walled City to be China and we consider it Hong Kong, and this has not been resolved to this day. But we have agreed to put aside our differences because it is in everyone's best interest that something be done about the Walled City." The place, he said, "is a health and environmental hazard." Now, with each side still asserting its sovereignty over the area, the Chinese and British have agreed that the Walled City must be torn down, its warrenlike buildings razed and replaced by a park. This plan has outraged many Walled City residents, even though the Hong Kong government is paying out $384 million to compensate the 900 businesses and 10,700 households that must be relocated. Many have been forced to vacate their apartments and businesses in eviction operations that have been rowdy and even violent. Only about 2,000 people remain and they will be gone soon, with demolition to start next January. To an outsider, it is hard to understand the appeal of the Walled City, which has a dark, dank medieval atmosphere. The streets are so narrow that when you stretch your arms you can touch buildings on either side.
The wooden buildings, 10 to 14 stories tall, have little foundation, and grow wider as they go up, blocking the sunlight. Ms. Ho, the American architect, said that when the population of the Walled City was at its peak of 40,000 recently, each person had about seven square feet of living space, and it was common for whole families to live and work in one tiny room. $2,000 a Month and No Taxes A Chinese herbalist, recently evicted from the Walled City, said he and his family of four lived in a 290-square-foot apartment where he also ran a medicine shop and even operated on patients, all without a license. "Of course I liked it," he said. "I made $2,000 a month and paid no taxes, only a little rent." The 58-year-old man, who had come from China and had lived in the Walled City for seven years, discounted its reputation as a haven for criminals, saying, "If you live here you know that it is peaceful." In fact, the Walled City was riddled with brothels, peep shows and drug dens in the 1950's and 60's when criminal gangs virtually ran the area, Ms. Ho said. The Hong Kong police began more vigorous law enforcement in the 70's, and the place settled down, attracting more businesses seeking to avoid regulations and taxes. and fewer thugs. A recent government survey found scores of small bakeries, butcher shops, clothing, toy and noodle manufacturers, and medical and dental clinics thriving here, catering to customers who live outside the Walled City but prefer its lower prices. The area was once a Chinese fort and administrative center. When the British forced China to lease to Hong Kong an area of the mainland now known as the New Territories, they agreed that the Chinese could retain the Walled City. 'Good Place' for a Family A year later the British unilaterally amended that accord and invaded the Walled City. Once Chinese troops were routed, Britain never tried to enforce its new claim. Over the years Hong Kong tried several times to clean out the Walled City, but China always objected. After the 1984 agreement by Britain to return Hong Kong to China in 1997, the two countries began negotiations on the Walled City. In 1987 a plan to raze it was announced. Eviction operations began a year and a half ago. Residents are reluctant to leave the Walled City because the price was right, and the life was good. "This is a good place to raise a family," Cheng Siu-tsing, a housewife, said, standing beneath a huge tangle of wires on Kung Street. "We save money by living here, and my husband is close to the factory where he works." She added, "We will never find a place like this one again."
The Times July 3, 1992, Friday Last squatters evicted in Kowloon BYLINE: From Jonathan Braude in Hong Kong SECTION: Overseas news LENGTH: 607 words
THE Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong's once teaming den of drug addicts, prostitutes and criminals, stands empty this morning, for the second time in its 94-year history. Enclosed by a newly erected fence where the famous wall once stood, its deserted buildings await the demolition teams. Eventually the site will be turned into a park. Scores of riot police yesterday moved in with shields and clubs to evict the last remaining squatters from a hastily-erected encampment on the perimeter. They occupied a small Buddhist temple at the entrance and surrounded about 20 former Walled City residents who had made their homes on the pavement since being evicted from the interior six months ago. Ten people had to be dragged from their kerbside dwellings, many of them struggling, and one woman was arrested for assaulting a government worker.
They were the last to go. On Wednesday, in a nine-hour operation, six households were forcibly removed from their homes in the final section of the city to be cleared while others left peacefully, though with obvious reluctance. Under the original lease, China refused to move its garrison from the old Qing dynasty fort on the site and the seven-acre Walled City remained beyond British jurisdiction. But when the garrison was finally ejected a few years later, Britain chose not to develop or police the area for fear of offending Peking. For more than 80 years, the labyrinthine streets of the city were a no-man's land beyond the control of either government. Soon squatters escapers from Chinese or British justice and taxes moved in. They received no services or rights, but lived in squalor until they were driven out by the Japanese. But after the surrender of the Japanese empire, the squatters came back in force. In another milestone today Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, the outgoing governor, flies out of the British colony for the last time this evening leaving his successor, Chris Patten, to take over the reins of power at one of the most difficult and sensitive periods in the territory's 150-year history. Lord Wilson will leave with full ceremonial honours but the verdict on his five years in power is still open. Undoubtedly an efficient administrator, with a detailed grasp of every aspect of policy, he presided over boom years interrupted only briefly by the 1987 stock market crash and the consequences of the 1989 upheavals in China. But for many his tenure was a disaster, which allowed China to extend its power over Hong Kong and crush all hope of democratic reform in a colony Britain has ruled as a benevolent dictatorship. His detractors say he failed to stand up for the development of parliamentary democracy, and his constant fear of pushing China too far soon taught the authorities in Peking that Hong Kong could be intimidated and brought to heel. He was, in the words of a retired senior civil servant John Walden, ''the best governor of Hong Kong China ever had''. He won friends in the colony with his pressure in London for full United Kingdom passports for all 3.2 million Hong Kong British citizens, his support for the environment and his ambitious proposal for a new airport, conceived as a move to boost morale in Hong Kong after China's supression in Tiananmen square.
However the airport backfired seriously, leaving Peking with the power to veto the project by the simple expedient of scaring away international investors. China could thus blackmail Britain into conceding valuable bargaining points and sending John Major on an official visit to Peking at a time when China had barely come in from the diplomatic cold.
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) July 29, 1992 Walled City protest threat BYLINE: By NG KANG-CHUNG SECTION: News; Pg. 3 LENGTH: 150 words
DEFIANT former Kowloon Walled City residents have threatened to start a marathon sit-in outside the office of the Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr Michael Suen Mingyeung, from tomorrow if officials refuse to discuss compensation with them. Ten residents have been occupying an arbour in a park at the Tung Tau Estate, opposite the Walled City, since their eviction early this month from the slum area.
They petitioned the City and New Territories Administration (CNTA) and demanded a meeting with officials on compensation packages on Monday but were rejected. Protest organiser Mr Cheng Shing-shi, 59, said yesterday that if they did not receive a positive reply from the Government today they would set up camp outside Mr Suen's office. A Government spokesman said officials were yesterday considering the need to meet the residents and would be sending them a written reply today.
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) September 4, 1992 Scuffles as Governor visits the Walled City BYLINE: By NG KANG-CHUNG and SUSAN FURLONG SECTION: News; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 426 words
TEN former Walled City residents scuffled with police after being stopped from handing a petition to the Governor, Mr Chris Patten, when he made a surprise visit to the Kowloon slum area yesterday. The protesters, who had hung banners and wrote a protest petition as soon as they saw Mr Patten arrive, waited until he had finished his tour and then flocked around his party to present the letter. At one point someone tried to block Mr Patten's path, and later other demonstrators sat down on the road to stop his car from leaving. They were quickly removed.
The residents have been camping outside the Tung Tau Estate, opposite the Walled City, for eight months. They claim the Government has not given them enough compensation for being evicted from their homes in the condemned tenement. Government Information Co-ordinator Mr Mike Hanson said the Governor had not been overly-disturbed by the incident. "It is not really a major event for us or for the Governor. People have the right to protest as long as it's peaceful," he said. A government spokeswoman said the protesters' petition had been received. Some residents accused the police of using excessive force to protect Mr Patten, who toured the Walled City for 20 minutes. Mr Chan Sai-yuen, 54, said: "We stayed orderly and peaceful, but the police beat us and stopped us from handing in our petition to the Governor." Mr Chan and Ms Cheung Shun-fong, 49, filed complaints to the Kowloon City police station. A force spokesman said they had been referred to its complaints and internal investigation branch. Kowloon City Division Commander Superintendent Fung Kam-wong, who led about 30 police officers accompanying the Governor during his visit, dismissed the residents' claims and said no protester had been beaten. Mr Hanson said the Governor wanted to keep his visit low-key and decided against telling the press. "He wanted to see the Walled City before it disappears, but we didn't want a huge press corp trying to follow him down those narrow lanes," Mr Hanson said. "It would be too difficult to manage." Even government information officers were kept in the dark about the visit. Mr Hanson said unannounced visits were part of Mr Patten's programme to get to know the territory. Yesterday's incident was not the first time protests at the Walled City have degenerated into scuffles. In April, two policemen, a clearance official and his assistant were hurt during a clearance operation when an angry resident lunged at them with a chopper.
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) January 30, 1993 Walled City protest ends BYLINE: By NG KANG-CHUNG SECTION: News; Pg. 3 LENGTH: 194 words
THE last batch of former Kowloon Walled City residents said yesterday they were prepared to accept the Government's rehousing terms after admitting that their yearlong protest to press for more compensation had failed. The move could see the end to the 14- month dispute and violent demonstrations.
The 10 residents, some of whom have accepted cash compensation, have been camping out in an open space on Tung Tau Estate opposite the Walled City after being evicted in the clearances. They admitted defeat yesterday and agreed to accept a government rehousing offer of public flats but maintained that they had been unfairly treated during compensation discussions. Their representative, Mr Tsang Chor-hing, said: "Some elderly women had been sleeping on the street for a year. The weather has turned cold in recent weeks and the most important thing is to let them get a home as soon as possible. "We shall continue to fight for more compensation through the appeal board but we hope we can be assured a fair hearing." A Housing Department official said flats had been reserved for eligible residents and they could move in whenever they liked.
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) February 16, 1993 Illegal immigrants using Walled City as a refuge BYLINE: By BELINDA WALLIS SECTION: News; Pg. 3 LENGTH: 439 words
POLICE have found illegal immigrants hiding in the Kowloon Walled City and believe there could be more using the condemned maze of alleyways and crumbling buildings as a refuge. The mainlanders know their way around the labyrinth and have set up home, police believe. Acting Chief Inspector Jonathan Fraser, the last officer to hold the now-defunct post in charge of the Walled City, said yesterday that two illegals immigrants were chased in there after an attempt to rob a grocery store in Wong Tai Sin three weeks ago.
But while Mr Fraser does not believe police have a big problem on their hands, they may step up operations when the demolition of the 2.7 hectare site begins later this month or early in March. "There is no indication now that there is a problem, but everybody is aware that the Walled City is there and it's a place to hide," Mr Fraser said. "When illegal immigrants come to Hongkong they are looking for temporary work and somewhere to live - a construction site is ideal. It's maybe that the Walled City provides the ideal home." On average, Kowloon City Division police arrest one illegal immigrant every day in their area, which includes the Walled City. During 100 years of infamy, the Wall City has been described as a slum, a squalid eyesore, the city of darkness, and even the cancer of Kowloon. Now the 8,800 flats stand empty; the 1,500 clinics, 570 workshops and 148 shops little more than shells. Even the rats have gone, deprived of their source of survival - man and his rubbish. The Walled City is not a desirable residence. "There's no water, no electricity, it would have to be a desperate person who chose to live in there," Mr Fraser said. But police are keeping a lookout. Yesterday, the smell of cooking gas had Mr Fraser peering down dark alleyways and stairwells, a large spanner in hand, but no unwelcome visitors were found. Details of the Walled City's demolition are expected to be announced soon. The Civil Engineering Department and the Hongkong half of the consortium, Express Builders, will meet today to discuss a timetable. While some single-storey buildings and temporary structures have already been destroyed on the eastern side of the city, the Civil Engineering Department is waiting for a structural survey before Hongkong's biggest demolition job can get underway. At the end of this month, members of the American Cleveland Wrecking Joint Venture arrive in Hongkong, bringing with them an array of equipment to destroy the city. Conventional methods will be used, because explosives have been deemed to be too dangerous.
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) March 24, 1993 First blow landed as the walls come tumbling down BYLINE: By NG KANG-CHUNG SECTION: News; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 436 words
BULLDOZERS moved into the condemned Kowloon Walled City yesterday, marking the beginning of a year-long project to flatten the 2.7-hectare slum area which had been a military fort of the Qing Dynasty. Contractors expected the 350 buildings, mostly built without proper planning in the 1960s, to be pulled down two months ahead of schedule because of their weak structure. After the Director of Civil Engineering Dr Edward Brand cut a ribbon, a crane operator swung a heavy metal ball to smash the walls of a five-storey building.
Wide applause followed each blow, smothering a protest by former Walled City residents. They said yesterday was "a day of shame" for Chinese, claiming the government should not have been allowed to knock down buildings on a piece of Chinese land. Twenty protesters, kept from the site by barricades and 10 policemen, shouted slogans and condemned the 100 officials and guests attending the demolition ceremony. A handful of spectators also gathered at the gate of the site to watch the historic event. According to the $ 42 million contract, the Express Builders-Cleveland Wrecking joint venture is required to flatten the site before May next year. But company experts expect the buildings to topple easily, enabling the project to be completed before then. The poor state of the buildings, which had been a haven for criminals and home to a host of unlicensed dentists, could also pose difficulties as they come down. Detailed surveying will be necessary as huge excavators and bulldozers from the United States eat their way through the tilting piles of homes and factories. A plan to drop the building yesterday with explosives was shelved for fear of dust pollution in nearby residential areas and the airport. Three US supervisors have been flown in to train workers on the big machinery, not commonly used in Hongkong. One of the supervisors, Mr James Hutchins, described the demolition as an easy job. "The buildings are very weak. We can pull down the walls of a five-storey building in around 15 minutes," he said. Cleveland Wrecking Company president and chief executive officer, Mr William Fenning, said it was planned to take down one building at a time to avoid a domino effect. He said the 150,000 cubic metres of debris and rubbish would be used in reclamation. The site will be turned into a park, which will include some existing wells and a yamen a military office of the Qing Dynasty built in the early 1800s - to house relics. The park will cost about $ 50 million and is scheduled to be opened in early 1996. Business Week
March 29, 1993 Bulldozing The World of Suzie Wong BYLINE: Pete Engardio; When not taking in the view, Engardio covers much of Asia from Hong Kong. SECTION: LETTER FROM HONG KONG; Number 3311; Pg. 22 D LENGTH: 1159 words
Since they were built in the 1920s, the giant picture windows of my cliffside apartment atop Victoria Peak have witnessed a lot of history. The first tenants, British managers of the funicular that zips 1,200 feet up and down the peak, had a panormic view of downtown Hong Kong, bustling Victoria Harbor, and the misty mountains of the New Territories in the distance. They watched the Japanese invade on the day after Pearl Harbor and saw the flood of immigrants following the communist conquest of China in 1949. Even though many of the graceful, white colonial buildings have been replaced by skyscrapers, and the junks and steamboats by monster barges, the view -- especially at night -- remains one of the best in the world. These days, though, I gaze out over this metropolis and brood. A few weeks ago, the Peninsula Group, owner of my building, notified me that it would be razed to make way for yet another retail complex. I have to be out by May 31.
lost soul. With 1997 just around the corner, I'm in the company of many other brooders in Hong Kong. We don't know what life will be like under Bei-jing -- only that Hong Kong never will be the same. But what's really disturbing is that in the race to squeeze more profits out of the colony, developers are already burying Hong Kong's old charm. I'm not talking just about architecture: Frankly, the ugly Peak Tower (except for my apartment) should have been knocked down long ago. More valuable are the vibrant, bewildering neighborhoods that give the city its soul. From the quaint to the notorious, the places that have been favorites with both tourists and locals for generations are vanishing. Bird Street, a colorful alley in the Mong Kok district, is lined with elderly Chinese vendors selling singing birds and elaborate bamboo cages. It's to be cleared this year. And if you want to visit the "poor man's nightclub," it's too late. For 34 years, the open-air bazaar on the harbor offered cheap clothes, fresh seafood and, in the old days, comedians, acrobats, and Chinese opera singers. Last April, it was closed for redevelopment. Highest on the endangered list are the seedy areas, which for years have furnished grist for cheap novels and kung-fu movies. I regret waiting too long to see the famed Kowloon Walled City, an area of a dozen blocks near Kai Tak Airport. Starting in the 1890s, it grew into a maze of dark passageways and tiny rooms housing more than 30,000 squatters. Under the jurisidiction of neither Beijing nor London, the Walled City was essentially lawless. In the 1940s, Governor Alexander Grantham called it "a cesspool of iniquity, with heroin divans, everything unsavory." I first read about it in Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies, the New Mafia, a sensationalized account of the Asian drug trade by Gerald L. Posner. As Posner told it, the place was so infested with hoods and dope fiends that he needed an escort of five policeman just to enter. "If you go in alone, the chances are you won't be coming back out," one cop cautioned melodramatically. This place I've got to see, I vowed, upon arriving here 212 years ago. But when I went there this January, all the tenants had been evicted. The site is being converted into a park. cockroaches. This makes me fear for another of my favorite eyesores: the Chungking Mansion on Nathan Road in the Kowloon district. Like hundreds of other Western kids, I had stayed in one of the cheap hostels in this sooty 17-story structure when I
backpacked through Asia on a shoestring. Granted, you slept with your wallet under the pillow, cockroaches and unsavory-looking characters were everywhere, and the building was a firetrap. Still, the Chungking building functions as a self-contained community, housing mostly Indian families. I still enjoy dropping in to browse through the Indian food shops or simply to watch the array of transients lined up at the creaky elevator -- Sri Lankan Tamils, Nigerians, Malaysian Muslims, and young Chinese. The only thing keeping the Chungking and its valuable land from being turned into a luxury hotel is that ownership is dispersed among many shopkeepers, who can't agree on a price. Wrecking balls are swinging much more freely in my favorite neighborhood: Wanchai. Most people know Wan Chai as the setting for Richard Mason's 1957 novel The World of Suzie Wong, the tale of a Western artist who falls in love with a Chinese prostitute and marries her. The red-light district hit its peak during the Vietnam War, when shiploads of sailors spilled into more than 100 clubs. The routine was for bar girls, working on commission, to get patrons to buy them expensive drinks. "The main trick was getting as many drinks as possible out of an American sailor without having to go to bed with him," recalls popular historian Arthur Hacker, a 25-year Hong Kong resident. Peacetime has been hard on Wan- chai nightlife, but several bars survive. At the dingy Suzie Wong Club, there are few patrons for Bobo and the other aging, overweight hostesses. But Wanchai is also a showcase of Cantonese entrepreneurialism and social life. And, it's home to the BUSINESS WEEK bureau. Within a few blocks, we have a vegetable market, butchers selling smoked ducks hanging by their necks, family-owned restaurants serving the gamut of Asian gastronomic delights and horrors, and myriad shops and stalls selling rosewood furniture, used TVs, seconds of designer clothes, and fresh carrot juice. I can get my shoes repaired, my clothes dry-cleaned, my fortune told, and my body tattooed. sealed fate. "The trouble is, what you see as picturesque is actually squalor," says Peter J. Mann, the district officer for Wanchai. He has a point. Given the horror of AIDS in Asia, it's difficult to argue for the preservation of a red-light district. Also, he notes, all those quaint alleys and tiny shops create other health and environmental problems. The issue of preservation is largely moot. Although Mann encourages developers to maintain some of the local color, Wan Chai's fate is sealed by its location, abutting the central business district. Towering office complexes are in the works, and every other week another chunk of old Wan Chai disappears. Many fear Hong Kong will become like Singapore. It, too, was once loaded with beautiful colonial buildings and thousands of picturesque shops. Almost all have been replaced by gleaming towers. Now, Singapore realizes that in obliterating its past, it became incredibly dull. The recent effort to spruce up surviving old facades to revive a Chinatown feel is too late and too obviously artificial. Singapore has lost its soul. Officials vow not to allow the "Singaporization of Hong Kong." Personally, I don't think they need to worry. I can't imagine a city under the control of Beijing ever being that efficient. Until May, though, I'll continue to brood about it all from my perch on Victoria Peak.
The Daily Yomiuri May 17, 1993, Monday Death throes; for the 'city; of darkness'; Former residents watch as; Kowloon slum is torn down BYLINE: Hideo Tanaka; Special to The Daily Yomiuri SECTION: Pg. 3 LENGTH: 484 words DATELINE: HONG KONG The British territory is bringing the final curtain down on one of the most bizarre chapters of Hong Kong's colonial history--Kowloon's Walled City. The walls are crashing down in the 2.7-hectare warren of squatter shacks, rat-infested factories, vice dens, gambling joints and unregistered dental clinics that were piled, over the years, more than a dozen stories on top of each other to form one of the world's most notorious slums. The Hong Kong government began its final demolition program on the slum last October. Known in Cantonese as the "city of darkness," because no daylight can penetrate its labyrinth of dark, dank alleys, the Walled City rose up to become a blot on the landscape of Kowloon City, situated as it is just in front of Hong Kong's busy Kai Tak Airport.
Because of a historical anomaly, under which Beijing claimed the site as an enclave within the British colony, the Walled City developed into a lawless haven where vice and triads thrived. For years, the site was not only a no-go area for tourists and locals, even police shunned the place. But it was a sore thumb amid Hong Kong's high-tech, high-rise landscape and its days were numbered. As the complex was emptied in stages, it developed a new notoriety-as an offbeat sight for adventurous tourists who would get lost in its confusing maze of alleys. The Hong Kong government plans to build a park on the site after the ramshackle walls have come tumbling down. Local workers are pounding the dirty buildings with concrete balls, but the Walled City is proving sturdier than expected and it is not likely that demolition will be finished within this year. As the work continues, crowds watch the demolition work from a nearby park. Many of the spectators are former residents of the slum, and they watch without expression as their former homes are pounded down, until, when one of the buildings gives way, there is a quiet cry from the crowd. One of the spectators, Deng Kuan-hsi, 80, says he lived in the Walled City for about 30 years. He says he was a carpenter and lived in a small basement room. Deng says he comes to watch the demolition work at his old abode two to three times a week. "Many people flooded into the Walled City from China and the area became unsafe about 10 years after I started to live there," Deng recalls. He said that although the rumors of robberies and drug dealing in the Walled City were true, none of the residents had been the target of these crimes because it was close-knit community where everyone knew each other's faces. He says he does not work now but manages to live on a monthly pension of HK$1,000 (about 15,000 yen) provided by the Hong Kong government.
Asked about the fate of the Walled City, Deng says, "I do not feel sad, for I am now leading a better life." "By the way, the demolition work is proceeding too slowly," he complains.
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) December 9, 1993 Walled City squatters ordered to end protest SECTION: News; Pg. 8 LENGTH: 345 words A SMALL group of elderly tenants of the Kowloon Walled City camping out at a public housing estate nearby in protest against the Government's compensation package were yesterday ordered to leave. At a chambers hearing, Master Woolley gave the 21 tenants until January 8 to leave the Tung Tau Housing Estate rest garden where they have been camping since July last year. They have been offered compensation for their shops of between $ 6 million for 700 square feet to $ 276,000 for 400 square feet. This works out at between $ 1,000 and $ 7,000 per square foot.
The tenants claim that shop space in the area near the Walled City costs between $ 12,000 and $ 22,000 per square foot. "The Government has robbed us of our shops. We will not move out until we get reasonable compensation and resettlement," said Cheng Shing-sze, chairman of the Kowloon Walled City representatives. Mr Cheng operated a herbal shop there for many years. He has rejected the offer of $ 391,000 compensation for his 410 square foot shop space. He claims that the payment would not buy a shop of a similar size. He rejected government claims that they were trespassing, adding that they had no choice as they had nowhere else to sleep. Mr Cheng said he had asked Master Woolley to offer them fairer compensation and was told the court was sympathetic but did not have the jurisdiction to make such an award. He stressed that his group was willing to leave the rest garden if their request was dealt with satisfactorily. Asked if the group would leave as ordered, Mr Cheng said: "We will wait and see what happens on the day." According to Lee Chu-yin, senior housing manager of the Housing Authority, 15 of the 21 tenants had been resettled on public housing estates. Suitable places were also offered to three others but they rejected them. Mr Lee, who was heckled by the tenants outside the Supreme Court, said he hoped the people would respect the court ruling and move out. Police were on standby as the tenants shouted abuse and waved their fists at Mr Lee.