Hak Nam, City of Darkness, the old Walled City of Kowloon was an unmistakable presence in the midst of urban Hong Kong. It was also one of the city’s greatest anomalies. Built on a site measuring little more than 100 x 200 metres without recourse to legislation and with little regard for basic services, the City not only survived for close on 100 years, it established itself as a thriving and ever-growing community.
Through a continual process of demolition and reconstruction — with never an architect in sight — individual buildings gradually homogenised. An intricate network of communal stairways linked one to the other, creating a warren of passages that made it possible to traverse the City without once coming down to ground. Only at street level did the old grid of public alleyways still exist, but hemmed in and built over, usually dark, damp and unappealing.
Just two regulations were observed: a 15-storey height limit due to the proximity of Kai Tak, Hong Kong’s old international airport, and the authorised installation of electricity to reduce the all too obvious risk of fire. Safe drinking water was supplied by a mere eight government stand-pipes, only one of which was within the City boundaries. Open drains ran besides the alleys and refuse was collected from just a few isolated locations.
And yet, at its peak in the 1980s, the Walled City was home to some 35,000 people. Shops, factories, restaurants, dental clinics, apartments — all were accommodated with little apparent order to create a thriving and bustling community. How did the Walled City come about and why did it survive for so long? How was it possible for so many people to live and work in such difficult conditions, yet in apparent harmony?
Before its final clearance in 1992, the acclaimed photographer Greg Girard and co-photographer and editor Ian Lambot spent four years exploring the City, talking to its inhabitants and recording them at work and in their homes. With some 360 photographs, mostly in colour, 20 extended interviews with a selection of those who lived or worked there, as well as other essays on the City’s history, services and character, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City is an extraordinary portrait of a unique community, now vanished forever.