The Walled City of Kowloon is the most populous place in the world

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Chinese writer Leung Ping Kwan in his book City of Darkness wrote about Kowloon the following: “Here on one side of the street there are prostitutes, and on the other, a priest distributes milk powder to the poor, while social workers distribute instructions, drug addicts sit with a dose under the stairs in the porches, and the children's playgrounds turn into a dance floor for strippers at night. Kowloon - an autonomous region in Hong Kong, where 33 thousand inhabitants lived on an area of 210 m by 120 m. The main feature of the settlement is that all 350 houses were interconnected and formed a kind of giant wall.

Today Kowloon is already among the dead cities, in the 1990s it was decided to evacuate all residents. Its history is extraordinary and tragic: a military fort on this territory was founded during the reign of the Song dynasty (960-1279), in 1898 the city was transferred to the possession of Great Britain, during the Second World War it was occupied by Japanese troops. The fortified city was demolished in 1993-1994, at that time it was the most densely populated place on the planet.

The buildings were ordinary slums, with no public goods or even normal lighting. On the lower floors, neon lights were on around the clock, as sunlight simply could not get there. There was not enough space, because the skyscrapers "grew" upward. Additional floors were constantly being completed, houses were overgrown with latticed balconies. Life on the rooftops was also in full swing: in addition to television antennas, there were clotheslines, water tanks and garbage containers. Adults often rested here and children played. The impression was that the city was about to collapse under the weight of its own weight.

The population of Kowloon has always been motley: after the surrender of the Japanese troops, many illegal immigrants came here, the city became a refuge for criminals and drug dealers. In the 1980s. in Kowloon there were a huge number of brothels, casinos, dens where opium and cocaine were sold. Neither Britain nor China wanted to take responsibility for what was happening inside this walled city.

Despite the highest crime rate, ordinary law-abiding residents remained in the city. As a rule, they had to huddle on the upper floors in order to somehow protect themselves from criminals. Violation of all possible sanitation and hygiene standards has led to the fact that the quality of life in Kowloon is worse than in any other area of Hong Kong. The government, realizing that the situation needs to be addressed drastically, has allocated HK $ 2.7 billion to develop a plan to evacuate people and demolish buildings. Absolutely all residents were forcibly evicted from Kowloon, receiving monetary compensation.

Now on the site of the fortified city park "Kowloon Walled City Park" is laid out, gardens in the style of the early Qing dynasty bloom. The territory of the park is 31 thousand square meters. The alleys are named after the streets located in the historic center of the city. In memory of Kowloon, there are five inscribed stones and three old wells, as well as a bronze medal received by the townspeople before it was destroyed.