Kowloon Walled City: A City of Darkness – Day and Night

Why did almost everyone in "high society" view the Walled City as a dark and dangerous place? ──Ian Lambot. The legendary "three-no-matter" zone of the Kowloon Walled City is a legend, a mystery... For nearly fifty years, this peculiar community was a dark world in the heart of Hong Kong. The Walled City had no laws, ignored basic services, planning regulations, or building standards, yet it not only persisted but thrived. But how could such a place exist in a modern city under the "hands-off" policy of the British, Chinese, and Hong Kong governments? Who would live there? And why? "City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City" not only includes substantial historical chapters but also countless fascinating photographs, drawings, maps, and oral histories from its residents, thoroughly exploring the rapid development of the Walled City between 1945 and 1990, while also examining its dark past. The Walled City always evoked a sense of eeriness and mystery due to many misconceptions about it, and this book also reveals the truth behind these misconceptions. The Kowloon Walled City is a bygone place that, at its peak, was home to over 35,000 people and remains known as the most densely populated community in the world. More than twenty years after its demolition, "City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City" documents the Walled City's golden age and demise, inviting readers to rethink and re-understand the space of the Kowloon Walled City and the extraordinary community that lived within it, leaving behind their unique imprint of the Walled City, and collecting the withered and flourishing aspects of the Walled City.