I read an article about the Kowloon Walled City before we left for Hong Kong, and I was fascinated by the idea of a lawless, super-crowded city that was still going strong when I was doing my OE (it was only demolished and replaced by a lovely Chinese garden in the early 1990s, and it's now called Kowloon Walled City Park).
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| What it looked like in 1972. Due to a legal weirdie this piece of land was not overseen by either the British government nor the Chinese one. Unlicensed dentists and doctors did well here, as well as factories and the "legal" businesses that bought from the factories. |
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| What it looks like now. |
Days after we left there I continued to be utterly fascinated by this place when it was a bustling mini-metropolis full of people trying to live away from the prying eyes of government officials. There's a book about this place called City of Darkness but it seems to cost around $US200 per copy so I can only hope there's a copy at the public library...
There's some good information about the city and about the book.
This is the best site I found.
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