Wonders in the Walled City
Last week, a friend invited me to go with her to the Kowloon Walled City Park (in Kowloon City, of course). She had flown in specifically to join the events celebrating Jackie Pullinger’s 60 years in Hong Kong. If you haven’t heard of Jackie Pullinger, you probably have heard of Kowloon Walled City. While the infamous City of Darkness was demolished in 1993, its legend still lives on today. It technically belonged to the Chinese (the only part of Hong Kong at that time) so British police could not enforce any laws there, but the Chinese also did not try to rule it, so it turned into a kind of no-man’s land with one triad ruling half of it and one triad ruling the other half. It was known for every kind of vice and was filled with opium dens, illegal dentists, brothels, and gambling parlors. And fishball factories. While it has been somewhat romanticized in recent years, the reality of growing up there was anything but romantic. With no building codes, buildings were built in...