City of Darkness

53

thousands of people — a historical maximum, recorded in 1994

All these people lived in an area comparable to two football fields

2,6

million people per square kilometer

500

buildings piled close to each other, and even on top of each other

Also known as

City of Darkness
Walled City
Lawless Enclave

The city has earned mentions in books, films, and computer games

This is how, without embellishment, begins the story of one of the most incredible places that ever existed on our planet — the Kowloon Walled City. The City of Darkness, the Hong Kong Anthill — this absolute record holder for population density has had many names, but all of them, one way or another, made it clear that people here literally live on each other's heads.

In a nutshell, China and Great Britain were so busy dividing the territories under their control that they completely forgot about the small piece of land that began to live its own life and obey no one. Surprisingly, most people voluntarily lived in such conditions. They preferred freedom to their usual life. Everyone has their own concept of freedom: they understood it as the opportunity to not follow the law, not pay taxes, and generally do whatever their heart desires and not be convicted for it. There were also those who simply had nowhere else to go. There were more and more of both. Over time, entire generations changed in this city, and the natives simply could not imagine what it was like to live differently. Although in order to see a different life, it was enough to leave the walls of the anthill.

Kowloon was far from the only place on Earth where poverty and lawlessness reigned. But it was the only one with such architecture and appearance. The main reason was the rapid population growth. In 10 years the city&s population could double.

And so it turned out that the houses, like liquid, filled all the space allocated for them. Illegal buildings grew like mushrooms after rain, the gaps between the houses gradually decreased, and eventually it all turned into one big and ugly house, a kind of self-regulating, albeit toxic, ecosystem.

You can pile up in different ways. All the chaos and absurdity of the buildings was due to the lack of a unified architectural plan for the city. At the dawn of its development, the city consisted of two- and three-story houses built on the ruins of a military fortress. Surprisingly, no one was going to demolish them, and they served as the foundation for further piling up. At first, the city's residents built everything themselves, with their own hands, as best they could.

Then small Hong Kong construction companies joined this process. They realized that in order to build something in Kowloon, you don’t need to get permits or pay taxes. But the demand for housing grew exponentially. They paid a little extra to the owners of already built houses for the opportunity to add a few floors, and 10-square-meter apartments costing 10 thousand dollars were flying off the shelves like hot cakes. Sometimes 7-8 people lived in such small apartments. Of course, such construction took place in violation of all possible architectural norms.

Courtyards and playgrounds ceased to exist in this city almost immediately, and the streets became narrower and narrower, sometimes reaching only 70 cm in width. Apartments either had no windows at all, or the windows offered a picturesque where you could sometimes reach out and touch the opposite house. At some point, the streets became so crowded that a parallel overground system of passages appeared in the city.

Water supply has always been one of the most pressing problems for the inhabitants of Kowloon. At first, there was no water in the city at all. Residents had to collect water from a well located outside the city. Then water carriers appeared, who were ready to bring water from that same well on schedule for $15 per person per month.

Soon, local entrepreneurs realized that they could make money on this problem. They dug several wells within the city limits, installed electric pumps there, which turned on at a certain time every day and filled the reservoirs located on the roofs with water. And from there, water was supplied to residents, it cost about $40 per month. The condition of these structures was very deplorable, and very often you had to walk along the streets under an umbrella, since sometimes the water did not just drip on your head, but actually poured.

However, this did not solve the problem completely. If the water in the reservoirs ran out, you had to wait for the next pump to turn on. Moreover, such water was not suitable for drinking, let alone even for bathing.

Until 1953, there was no electricity at all in the walled city. At that time, such settlements were content with only kerosene lamps for lighting and stoves for cooking on solid or liquid fuel.

The impetus for electrification was a very large fire that occurred on New Year's Eve 1953 in a refugee camp from mainland China in the Shek Kip Mei area, when more than 50,000 people were left homeless.

Starting in 1953, the local electric power company "China Light and Power" began active work to connect absolutely all objects in Hong Kong in order to reduce the use of open fire in everyday life. This included the Walled City.

1k

of mini-factories where people worked and lived

Immigrants

The original inhabitants of Kowloon were migrants who fled the Chinese regime

Criminals

No police - no problems for those who are wanted or engaged in illegal activities

The area of this fortress city was only 2.7 hectares, and there were about four hundred buildings on it, in which a huge number of people lived and more than 1000 different small factories worked. Imagine how much biological and industrial waste was born here every day. Despite the efforts to regularly remove the garbage, absolutely everything here looked like a garbage dump: the streets, the roofs and almost every apartment.

There was no police here, and everyone had complete freedom to do everything that was prohibited in Hong Kong. Even the triads — the all-powerful Chinese criminal groups — kept Kowloon as a neutral zone. Despite all this, there were extremely few murders and other violent crimes committed in Kowloon. Everyone understood that the independence of this territory was a rather ephemeral thing and in the event of some really dramatic events, the authorities would do everything possible to put an end to it.

Therefore, everyone — both the triads and ordinary residents — kept order. The police generally did not dare to enter the territory of Kowloon, but even if it happened that they went in pursuit of some pickpocket, the locals would immediately throw garbage at them. Intelligence work in Kowloon was also impossible, because all the residents knew each other and it was difficult for an outsider to penetrate their ranks and pretend to be one of them.

Despite the abundance of representatives of various "lower classes", Kowloon was mostly inhabited by decent people. Everyone knew each other, neighbors helped each other whenever possible. Any sin was possible here, but there were very few murders and, in general, it was calm. Everyone was busy with their own business and survived as best they could. This anarchic society was self-regulating.

Albert Campo, pastor

Lived in Kowloon for 16 years

Dangerous childhood

When I was a boy, the desire to explore Kowloon never left me for a minute. I wandered through the dark corners of the city, but no matter how confused I got, I somehow always found my way back home. My greatest pleasure was walking on the rooftops, because they were a place where my friends and I could play. We would jump on the mattresses that people threw out of their apartments and pretend that they were trampolines. We knew that the airport was a 10-minute walk away. When the planes flew over us, we could clearly see the people in them, who, in turn, could see us clearly through the portholes. But we didn't realize how dangerous it was to play on the roof, and we let kites fly into the sky, sometimes even while another plane was flying right over our heads. It was a breathtaking sight!

Jung Lai-wan, dim sum vendor

Lived in Kowloon for 22 years

Plan B

We moved to Kowloon when my eldest daughter was one year old. Our neighbors from Guangzhou also moved there. We chose this place because the housing was cheap. When my children grew up, my husband lost his job, and we just started making dim sum and selling them. We all woke up every day at 5 a.m. My husband made the buns, and the kids helped make the buns. We steamed them, and as soon as they were ripe, we took them out onto the street and sold them. We had a wooden cart, the kind vendors use, and inside it was an oven, which kept the baked goods warm. Dim sum tastes better when hot, right?

Chan Chung-chuen, cartographer

Lived in Kowloon for 6 years

The Cartographer Who Walked on the Roof

Kowloon was like a labyrinth to me. I would leave work, take a flashlight, and walk through its nooks and crannies, measuring everything with a ruler. I never knew what might happen: sometimes a stream of water would fall on me from above. It was like an underground exploration. In some places it was pitch dark, and even with a flashlight in my hands, I felt uneasy. If I suddenly heard a rustling sound or a loud noise, I would immediately run away in fear. Dogs chased me. I was yelled at and sworn at by locals. It became especially difficult to visit Kowloon after the information about the demolition was made public, because its inhabitants were at their limit. They did not know who we were, and did not want to share any information, did not allow anyone to enter their homes. At that time, when I lived there, I only moved around on the roof, that is, to get to the destination, you did not need to go down! The roofs had their own markings, roads. I called it the Kowloon Highway.

Paul Tang, former mafioso

Lived in Kowloon for 30 years

Broke down

Kowloon was good for three things: crack dens, brothels, and unlicensed dentists. My father moved to Kowloon from mainland China and built a small shop right in our Kowloon apartment. He divided it into two parts — the work area of the shop and the bedroom behind the wall. I often helped my father with the shop, working as a salesman. The shop, in addition to household goods and food, also sold drug paraphernalia. Shop visitors often offered me to try it myself, but I held back. At some point I finally tried it and couldn't stop.

Wong Chun-ping, fish ball maker

Lived in Kowloon for 30 years

Craftsman

When I wasn't studying or playing, I had to take care of my brothers and sisters, and I took on this chores to help my parents. Our family made and sold fish balls. My father got up every day at 4 a.m. to go to the market and prepare all the ingredients. I was assigned to mold the balls, and I did it very quickly. Fishball-making competitions were often shown on TV, and I could make them even faster than the winners of those shows. In a minute, I could make more than 100 fishballs. Sometimes our friends and neighbors would crowd around our house just to watch this process.

Lam Po-chun, postman

Worked in Kowloon for 12 years

The costs of the profession

My mentor told me that it usually took him a month to prepare a student for work. At that time, I was very hungry for knowledge, and it took me only two weeks. Even during dinner, I thought about street and house numbers. Sometimes, while taking a shower, I would sing: "2, 6, 9, and after 9 comes 3, then comes 32, and after that comes 32, 11 and 12." I kept mumbling something about numbers. The main difficulty was that many of the houses didn't even have numbers. Kowloon was the only place that shocked me in my years as a postman. Postmen rarely experience shock in their profession.

The letter boxes were made of steel, and there were a lot of electric wires on top. I hardly knew that one of the wires was touching the metal box. And at the moment when I was throwing in the letter, I was electrocuted. Since I left this place, I have never seen such huge rats in Hong Kong. But for Kowloon, this was a common sight. The rats were the size of cats. Their bellies dragged on the ground. I have never seen such horror anywhere else!

Doctors worked in extremely unsanitary conditions. Their prices were strikingly different from official doctors in the city, but the quality of equipment, materials, and their qualifications were always questionable. However, this did not scare off the majority of low-income locals, and even in clients "from the outside" there was no shortage.

One of the results of the lack of government control was the appearance of a huge number of dentists in Kowloon: out of 150 doctors, 87 were dentists, all from mainland China. Many of them were real dentists and had the appropriate documents and diplomas of the mainland, but they did not have the right to legally practice in Hong Kong.

There were about a thousand different small production facilities, cafes and restaurants on the territory of the walled city. Most of them were "one-man" factories, when the owner himself was the workforce, the accountant and the seller. One of the most common industries was the production of Chinese noodles. Entry into the business was inexpensive, and the demand was high and constant.

The cafes, with their windows facing the "street" from the walled city, looked quite decent, but what was going on inside was shrouded in mystery. Since there was practically no government control here, this untied the hands of the owners of such restaurants to increase profits by reducing the cost of production and ingredients as much as possible.

As for the "light industry", here you could find mini-factories producing anything you want. It was believed that the highest quality fakes of clothes and shoes were produced right here, in Kowloon. Products made of rubber, fabric, leather and even metal could be purchased from local factories for next to nothing.

In fact, there was no education as such in Kowloon itself. A serious problem was children hiding from school. In some buildings, makeshift schools and kindergartens were organized, where the more affluent residents sent their children.

Most children went to small groups, organized by their neighbors, where they were taught to read, write, draw and recite poetry. But most of the time they ran with their friends on the stairs, corridors and rooftops, playing hundreds of different exciting games.

The list of the quarter's infrastructure did not include cinemas, clubs or sports grounds. The real space used for recreation and socialization of the former fort's population was the roofs. There were paths and stairs to move from one level to another. Only here could anyone find at least some free space. Children played on the roofs, young people relaxed, their parents socialized and met, and older generations sat playing manjong.

This website is an enthusiastic project made in 2018 to experiment with visual storytelling techniques. It was shut down but restored and slightly remastered later in 2025.

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