It’s hard to believe that what is now a beautiful park used to be one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Despite having been demolished 20 years ago, the Kowloon Walled City continues to captivate people today. While at first glance, it may look just like a pleasant garden in the middle of the busy city of Hong Kong, it felt surreal and disconcerting to visit a place with so much history behind it. This was the most fascinating place I visited during my recent trip to Hong Kong.

Formerly a military stronghold during the 15th century, the Walled City became an enclave after the New Territories were leased to Britain by China in 1898. Following the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II, its population increased dramatically evolving into a self-governed city.

At its height in the late 1980s, the Kowloon Walled City packed 33,000 people into roughly 2.6 hectares in a maze of dark alleys and high-rise tenements. Because of the scarcity of space, there was nowhere to build but up. What resulted was a stunningly dense vertical slum that just grew organically, defying any type of master plan or architecture.

The book “City of Darkness” documents how 300 or so interconnected buildings were crammed into one enormous block and how the community grew from its extraordinary circumstances. The high-rise labyrinth was home to thousands of residents, most of whom lived peacefully in a tightly-knit community amid the toughest and most cramped quarters, with only a standpipe water supply, little or no legal electricity and no drainage.  

Since it stood on land that was legally a Chinese military fort, it couldn’t be touched by the British-run Hong Kong government, resulting in a semi-lawless squatter slum. Because of its ungoverned status and government neglect, it deteriorated attracting an influx of Chinese immigrants, unlicensed businesses, cheap food processing plants and factories crammed into the same space. The Walled City was known to be controlled by Chinese mafia called triads and became a hotbed of illegal activities like prostitution, gambling and drug abuse.

I think the main reason I’m geeking out on this right now is that this extraordinary enclave has had extensive pop-culture influence on movies, video games and art depicting urban decay and lawless societies. It has served as an inspiration for gritty settings of overcrowded, crime-ridden cities in cyberpunk and dystopian films like Blade Runner, Batman Begins and Ghost in the Shell.

The stacks in the recent futuristic film Ready Player One look like a trailer park version of the Kowloon Walled City. While most movies recreate the look through elaborate sets, the 1998 film Bloodsport starring Jean-Claude Van Damme is one of the few movies that filmed scenes within the actual Walled City before its destruction.

The Kowloon Walled City also figures in a lot of video games, such as Kowloon’s Gate (released as Kowloon’s Gate VR in 2017), Shadowrun: Hong Kong, Deus Ex, Call of Duty: Black Ops and one in development that I’m very interested in playing called HK Project, where you play a cat exploring Kowloon Walled City.

While it was shunned in its lifetime, for outsiders and foreigners, there’s just something so fascinating about the place that kind of makes you wish you could explore it as it was. One place that’s been on my bucket-list of places to visit is the amusement arcade “Kawasaki Warehouse” in Japan, which recreates the old walled city and features amazing details painstakingly gathered from original source material found in old photos of the city and items collected in Hong Kong.

Today, the site of the former Kowloon Walled City has been redeveloped as a historic park in its honor. The Jiangan-style garden of the early Qing Dynasty is now a green and peaceful space studded with Chinese pavilions and ponds. There weren’t a lot of people when I visited, just a few senior citizens practicing tai chi in the open spaces and chess gardens and reading newspapers along the corridors.

While walking around the park, I found it hard to imagine how life must have been like there before. While some artifacts from the city remain, such as remnants of the South Gate, much of it has been replaced with aesthetic features, floral paths, landscaped gardens and traditional Chinese architecture.

The scenic park is divided into eight landscape features, namely the Yamen, Old South Gate, Eight Floral Walks, Garden of Four Seasons, Garden of Chinese Zodiac, Chess Garden, Mountain View Pavilion as well as the Fui Sing Pavilion and Guibi Rock.

While the Kowloon Walled City’s old presence and almost everything it once represented has been erased, there are a few features and exhibits that give you a sense of history, including a 3D bronze model of the buildings and elaborate cross-section line artwork depicting the living conditions before near the main entrance.

Documentary archives including aerial photos of the old city are displayed along some corridors so visitors can learn more about the place. The Almshouse (which once served as a home for the aged) is the only building that remains of the Walled City.

It’s here where you can find the most interesting feature of the new park – an outdoor display area and six exhibition rooms, which recreate the old days of the Kowloon Walled City through models, images and sound effects. The exhibition rooms transport visitors momentarily back in time, giving a glimpse of the daily lives of the residents of the walled city before it was demolished.

Kowloon Walled City was a huge beehive-like labyrinth, with buildings reaching 13-14 stories high. There were over 20-30 alleys occupying 2.7 hectares and hundreds of  dark passageways between buildings. Despite this, the city only had three elevators.

In one room, I was greeted with a tunnel-like passage lined with a chaotic network of electrical wires. The alleys were only lit by the bleak glow of neon lights while factory fumes from businesses filled the air. You could hear the water dripping from burst pipes that sent a cascade of water down to floors below and mechanical clanging from machines. 

There was no official water supply in the city and residents had to rely on private water suppliers who pumped water from underground and connected pipes to nearby water buildings or tanks or individual units for a monthly charge. The water was unhygienic and unsafe for drinking.

Another room showed the various home-based industries that mushroomed in the city, including noodle factories, candy factories and unlicensed dental clinics catering to the residents. Since registration and taxpaying was not required in the city, hundreds of factories set up shop here. One food factory had a chimney that was 13 stories high. It’s said that 80% of the territory’s fishballs were made here. There was even a whole street occupied by unlicensed dentists catering to the needs of the community.

Yet another exhibition room simulated the environment of a rooftop in the walled city in the 1970s and 1980s, showing how children still managed to find joy and play in such a place. I didn’t understand the audio commentary since it was in Chinese, but the striking images and sound of children’s laughter as they played with the antennas on the rooftops was just haunting.

The interactive exhibit rooms also shows a series of flashbacks of the walled city and allows visitors to interact with people living there through motion sensor technology. I got a slice of the daily life walking along the dark corridors, watching residents line up to wash laundry, playing jump-rope with children on the roof, and even sharing a virtual beer with a local.

For many who visit the Kowloon Walled City Park, it may seem like just another serene garden where you can enjoy nature and take a break from the crowded city streets. But if you spend some time reading the materials on display and visit the exhibition rooms, you’ll just be astounded by the city’s remarkable past. While its transformation to a park is amazing, you get this sense of nostalgia for the lost city and for the generations of residents who lived there for decades.

Location & how to get there

Kowloon Walled City Park is located in Kowloon City, Hong Kong.

• Ride the MTR and exit at Lok Fu Station Exit B, then take a taxi to Tung Tau Tsuen Road; or
• Ride bus 1 from the Tsim Sha Tsui Ferry Pier Terminus. Get off at Tung Tau Tsuen Road (opposite to the park).

The park is open daily from 6:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. The exhibition rooms are open daily from 10:00a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (Closed on every Wednesday). Admission: Free.