Overview
Kowloon Walled City (九龍城砦) was a city located in the Kowloon City District of British Hong Kong, and the area surrounding this city was called Kowloon City. Kowloon City was originally adjacent to Kai Tak Airport, but in a narrower sense, it refers to the entire downtown area of Kowloon City today.
Kowloon Walled City was demolished in 1994 and now just Kowloon City takes its place as its reforming itself.
After World War II, a "high-rise slum," the only one of its kind in history, sprang up in this area. At its peak, the area was overcrowded with 350 multi-tenant buildings on a 3-hectare site, housing more than 50,000 residents. This means that five people lived on a single tatami mat, and even today, when the world population has exceeded 7.5 billion, no city or slum has been created that exceeds this number.
History
The fort was initially built as a stronghold to protect Hong Kong, which was opened as a port, from pirates.
Under the treaties of the Opium War and the Second Opium War, in 1898, the Qing dynasty leased the New Territories and Lantau Island to the British for 99 years. However, with the exception of Kowloon Walled City, which was excluded from the lease, it became a de jure enclave within the British territory of Hong Kong. Later, under pressure from the British military, the Qing military and administration of Kowloon Walled City were eliminated, and even after the Qing dynasty became the Republic of China, it became an administrative power vacuum, virtually beyond the reach of any country's laws.
When the former Japanese occupied Hong Kong in 1941, the city walls that had been built were demolished to make way for an expansion of the neighborhood. 1945 saw the city again become British territory, but Hong Kong itself was in a precarious situation. In the midst of this situation, many refugees poured into Hong Kong, and many of the people were herded into Kowloon Walled City, which was not under sovereignty, and this situation did not change at all when the People's Republic of China was established in 1949.
After the walls were torn down, barracks and temporary dwellings were built by refugees in an uncontrolled manner on the site. The influx of refugees did not stop, and the excessive residential population led to the creation of slums through unplanned expansion.
Eventually, the barracks were replaced by high-rise reinforced concrete buildings (up to 15 stories), and the interior of Kowloon Walled City and its streets became a maze of multiple layers.
In addition, because both Britain and China claimed ownership of the walled city but did not supervise and control the facilities, illegal activities such as publishing and selling pirated books, gambling, prostitution, and drug trafficking became the norm, and medical and dental clinics run by unlicensed doctors (although many of them were not amateurs since they fled from mainland China) and restaurants and factories that disregarded sanitary laws flourished. It became said that "once you enter Kowloon City, you cannot come out" and has come to be called the Oriental Sinners (東洋の魔窟) in the east.
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