Memories of the City of Darkness: Kowloon Walled City and Cultural Memory

“The unknown is an abstraction; the known, a desert; but what is half-known, half-seen, is the perfect breeding ground for desire and hallucination” Juan José Saer

Author: Kenn Rushworth

Intro and Background

Formed in the cracks between the governance of China and the British empire, Kowloon Walled City became the most densely populated settlement on Earth (Fraser & Yi, 2017). Its existence as a Chinese territory surrounded entirely by colonial British land came about due to China being unwilling to cede the area to the British during the drawing up of the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong territory in 1898 (Harter, 2000). Britain agreed to let China keep the land until the colonial administration for the area was established. This never came to pass, the British declared it part of their jurisdiction but adopted a hands-off approach and the Chinese government took a similar stance whilst also claiming it belonged to them(Carney, 2013). Consequently, Kowloon Walled City found itself isolated between two superpowers, who due to both the tensions between them and the difficulty the city offered, opted to leave Kowloon Walled City to its own devices.

Kowloon Walled City became a lawless enclave that over time turned into something of a haven for people who fled the Chinese Civil War and Cultural Revolution (Fraser & Yi, 2017). The largely unchecked activity and movement in the city saw its population grow upward of thirty thousand people; this is a mere estimate as getting an exact figure proved virtually impossible (ibid). Its lifetime as a settlement ended in the early 1990s when the British finally demolished it after having tried since 1933 to do so.

However, it is since its demolition that Kowloon Walled City has worked its way into the wider cultural conscience and gained more widespread attention. While the city was known for its crime, unsanitary living conditions, unlicensed dentists, and lack of natural light it also captured the imagination of many artists and writers. Now a go-to source of inspiration for works on futuristic dystopias, Kowloon Walled City is viewed as something of a fantasy, a place of both anarchy and relative freedom.

This essay examines how the cultural memory of Kowloon Walled City changed over time and finds that the enduring hyperreal version of the city created since its destruction belies the lived experience of its former residents. I argue that the reality of Kowloon Walled City’s inhabitants has been lost as memories of the city have evolved as the city itself became the point of pop culture inspiration. Particularly for art emerging from the ‘cyberpunk’ scene — films in the 80s and 90s (Blade Runner & Ghost in the Shell, novels and series (City of Darkness) in the 00s and computer games in the modern day (Stray).

Furhtermore, I argue that the changes in the perception of the city are due to the sense of mystery that persist to surround it. The mystery surrounding the city and its unregulated mix of organic and chaotic growth allowed it to become a canvas upon which people could imprint their imagined hyperrealities upon — Kowloon Walled City has become a breeding ground for imagination, nostalgic freedom, and dark fantasy. This is bolstered by the half-known stories and limited resources about the city which provide perfect conditions for fictions to bloom. This, however, by extension the transforms the cultural memory of the city and dehistoricizes it.

The definition of cultural memory I to anchor this essay is that of memory that transcends that of the individual and over time passes into the collective domain. Within the study of cultural memory there are two differing approaches, the first approach being that the past influences the present and the second, conversely, argues that the collective present forms our understanding of the past (Schwartz, 2010). This essay leans towards the latter of the two approaches. This becomes evident when discussing the secondary sources related to the city such as films and literature, which through the scale of their influence have shaped the broader public perception of the walled city.

The analysis of cultural memory twinned with the comparison of primary and secondary sources herein makes this essay a significant contribution to the literature on Kowloon Walled City. Whilst there has been documentation of the City’s influence on popular culture it is seldom discussed in detail, and rarely done so with a range of sources covering the political and historical aspects of the city — explored through Hansard documents from the House of Lords — to the present day cultural influence it has — discussed in reference to modern cinema. Moreover, with the recollection of memory being an ongoing constructive process it is as important as it is interesting to see how particular memories alter over time (Schwartz, 1982).

In writing this essay I take into consideration the reality of the lived experience of the city’s inhabitants as well as the structure of the city itself. There will however be limitations in the main body of this text due to lack of access to Chinese language sources at the time, thus giving this essay an unintentional but distinctly Western approach. Moreover, when returning to this piece in 2023/4 it became apparent that several sources about the city and its history had either been deleted or placed behind paywalls in the 5 years since research on this began.

The primary sources drawn upon herein are documents from the House of Lords and photodocumentary evidence which illustrates how the city was regarded during the years of its existence. Following this, secondary sources influenced by Kowloon Walled City will be examined against the primary material. The result will be an examination into how the cultural memory surrounding the city has changed over time and how the mystery surrounding the city that grew out if being an untamed settlement between two superpowers allowed it to capture the imagination of writers and artists, which ultimately led to Kowloon Walled City being rehistoricised.

Primary Sources: From the House of Lords to Kowloon Walled City

“There is no law to apply to them and the conditions one can see there are beyond description” — Lord Kennet (HL Deb 29 Jan. 1974 vol. 352 col. 463–8)

Views of the city and its structure

In 1974 Lord Kennet rose to address the House of Lords regarding the density of persons in Kowloon Walled City. Throughout his address a rare and detailed account of life inside the city was given. The scale of the city was detailed as being six-and-a-half acres (2.6 Hectares or roughly 26,305 sq. metres) with alleyways no more than three feet (>1 metre) wide thus providing an image of the dense nature of the settlement (HL Deb 29 Jan. 1974 vol. 352 col. 463–8). Furthermore, Kennet describes the towering appearance of the structure stating: “buildings standing on these 18-inch-wide (46 cm) alleys are 10, 11 and even 13 storeys high.”(ibid).

The dynamics and scale of the city from the outside are best portrayed in photographer Greg Girard and writer Ian Lambot’s work City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City (1993). The work consists of photos taken between 1986 and 1992 at the end of the city’s existence, a time which coincides with the peaks of its size. The image from 1987 in figure 1 details the magnitude of the city with its thousands of tiny dwellings amalgamated into towers reaching skyward, supporting Lord Kennet’s description some thirteen years earlier.

(fig. 1) Kowloon Walled City at night, view from the SW corner, 1987, by Greg Girard from: G. Girard and I. Lambot, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City, (London: Watermark, 1993)

With Kowloon Walled City being both overcrowded, with around 8,500 people per acre, and void of any enforcement regarding building regulations, there arose the inevitable challenge of maintaining liveable hygiene standards. Kennet in his aforementioned speech to the Lord’s continued to graphically describe the conditions in the city:

“Down the middle of each [alleyway] runs an open drain with the sewage running down it, because the site is on a slope; and in the sewage you see very large rats” (HL Deb 29 Jan. 1974 vol. 352 col. 463).

In the same debate, Earl Cowley followed up on Kennet’s account of the city, when he stated: “…poverty and squalor…is synonymous with the Walled City of Kowloon” whilst highlighting that “this slum” had become infamous due to “bad housing, its lack of social services, its violent crime, and the extensive corruption and trafficking in drugs” (ibid, col. 468). Cowley would also again highlight the sheer scale of the overcrowding present in the area — drawing attention to how 45,000 people (33,000 is the often given population figure — but there is no way of clarifying any number) in just 6½ acres makes a population density of 5 million people per sq. mile, while the European standard at the time regarded 1,000 people per sq. mile as being grossly overcrowded (ibid). These quotes outline the British parliamentary view that Kowloon Walled City was essentially an unregulated den of crime and squalor.

The claustrophobic and filthy nature of the city described by Kennet and Cowley in the Lords can again be corroborated by the work of Girard and Lambot, whose photography not only showed the scale of the city but brought evidence to the world of life inside the dark alleys (fig. 2). Figure 2 shows two of the key features that the city’s unique and chaotic structure was largely created around — the sprawling mass of electricity cables and the presence of water.

(fig. 2) Dark City .04 by Greg Girard (cityofdarkness.co.uk)

Despite the graphic and damning descriptions of Kowloon Walled City, there was some acknowledgement, by Cowley, that the city had reached this state, as a result of the land dispute between Britain and China. When alluding to how the subsequent power vacuum in the area had allowed Triads to gain almost undisputed control of the racketeering within the walls he concedes that: “these factors, like symptoms of a disease, are the result of a long-standing sovereignty dispute between Britain and China”(HL Deb 29 Jan. 1974 vol. 352 col. 468).

This sovereignty dispute links with the alluded to masses of power cables (fig. 2) which helped define the structure of the city. Figure 3 is a memo detailing the stance of the Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong in 1964 (Likely Edmund Brinsley Teesdale, but there is no clear marking of his name on the available document) regarding the electricity supply to the Walled City. Neither China nor the Colonial British Empire would take responsibility for the provision of power to the city and as a result illegal power tapping via makeshift cable networks became the norm within the walls. The details in figure 3 provides both a Western view of the city and details the living conditions of the residents. Within the memo the tense situation between the Chinese government in Peking (known as ‘Beijing’ in Britain since 1990) and the British colonial government is evident. The statements: “As we know, the Peking government challenged our jurisdiction over Kowloon Walled City” and “It was important that nothing should be done which might suggest we accepted the present situation for ever” illustrate the tension between the powers (fig.3). Such details highlight Kowloon Walled City’s position as a settlement caught in a void between East and West, not quite within reach of either’s grasp.

As alluded to above, the presence of water was a major contributing factor to the way in which Kowloon Walled City developed. Like the electricity supply it would be illegally tapped due to both Chinese and British governments refusing connect the settlement to their own supplies. When a supply was discovered it would be shut off by the relevant authorities but another would be tapped soon after, leading to the mass of dead and live cables and pipes punctuating the city’s landscape. It is the necessity of electricity and water, and in turn their effect on the aesthetic make-up of the city, that proved to be an influence on a number of secondary sources (discussed below). The attainment of water and electricity and the structural undertakings to supply them to the residents provide an example of the organic nature of a city to organise itself (Tan, 2012). This unregulated self-organising element of the city remains integral to the cultural memory of the settlement. The city was entirely created by its inhabitants not overseen by any higher authority, allowing it to become a pure creation of the people it housed.

(fig.3.) Memo discussing Kowloon Walled City’s electricity supply (http://cityofdarkness.co.uk/power-for-all/electrics-01/)

Life and the People — Crime and Drugs

The unregulated nature of Kowloon Walled City not only led to unhygienic living conditions but also allowed for the crime and drug trafficking to go largely unchecked. Evidence of the pervasive nature of drugs in the city came in an article called “Walled City of Squalor” for U.S News and World Report (1991), in which Eric Ransdell interviewed a thirty-nine-year-old man and drug addict by the name of Cham Pan Kwong. The most startling, and admittedly depressing, detail in the interview came when Kwong, whilst stood with six other addicts outside the tea shop where he bought heroin, mentioned how the taking of heroin gave him hope — attesting to the bleakness of existence for addicts in the city.

Further evidence of the drug problem and the unmonitored sex trade in the city is highlighted in Jackie Pullinger’s 1989 work Crack in The Wall: Life & Death in Kowloon Walled City. In a sub-section entitled ‘Hooked on the city’ Pullinger states, when becoming upset at the site of underage prostitutes wandering the narrow lanes of city: “I noticed their hands, which were scarred on the back with needle marks from the heroin injections” , before puzzling on whether the heroin was to make the job more bearable or whether the job was to pay for the heroin (Pullinger, 1989, p.14). Pullinger continues “There were bodies at that time lying in the streets near drug dens: they could have been dead or alive” (ibid), then subsequently mentions ‘weather men’ who guard the alleys which house the heroin huts, in which upward of 100 people at a time chased the dragon (inhaling heroin through a tube held over heated tin foil) “in lonely chorus” (ibid, p.15)

These first hand accounts from within the walls illustrate not only the desperate lives of numerous citizens but highlight the lack of any laws governing the city or its people. As alluded to by Kennet and Cowley, Ransdell’s article mentions how organised crime had come to run life in Kowloon Walled City: “…Triad gangs that ran the opium dens, brothels, casinos and live sex shows flourished in its maze of rat-infested alleys and dark stairwells.” (Ransdell, 1991).

Crime and corruption proved to be a defining characteristic of the “social eco system of the community”, as stated by Fraser and Li in their work on crime and cultural memory in Kowloon Walled City (2017). Their work relied in-part on the testimonies of residents of the city, one resident shed light on the network of corruption between the police and the local triads, declaring that

“…the CID [police] were ferocious. They could do whatever they liked. They could arrest you and charge you whenever they liked. For example, somebody was robbed, they arrested you. It was very dark. They went to your triad head for scapegoat. If the triad head refused to ‘submit’ somebody as scapegoat, the cops would trouble you, for example, raiding your dens.” (quote from an interview in: Fraser & Li, 2017)

Crime and corruption were intrinsic aspects of life and experience in the city, another anonymous resident in Fraser and Li’s work significantly asserts that “Many things that didn’t exist in the outside world, they could be found in the Walled City” (ibid). This quote explains why Kowloon Walled City has made such an indelible mark on wider cultural imagination and additionally ascribes to its lawless and unregulated nature. Kowloon Walled City sat beyond the borders of a world governed by structure and laws, seemingly free to be run, built, and lived in however its residents decided, making it prime territory for peoples imaginations to build upon.

The primary sources available on Kowloon Walled City paint a picture of a dark unclean settlement overrun with crime and corruption. The British, who had colonised the surrounding areas of Hong Kong (of which Kowloon was designated as part of), saw the “city of dreadful night” as a blot on the landscape and desired to “tear the lot down and start again” for decades (HL Deb 29 Jan. 1974 vol. 352 col. 473). Photographic documentation by Girard and Lambot (1993) shows the grim reality of the Walled City and oral testimonies in the works of Ransdell (1991), Pullinger (1989), Fraser and Li (2017) give insight into the lived experiences of the residents. However, while each of these primary sources detail the life of the city it is since its death that it has truly made its mark on imaginations and cultures outside of its walls.

Life Beyond and After the Wall: Popular Inspiration and Cultural Influence

“…my thoughts and memories are unique only to me, and I carry a sense of my own destiny. Each of those things are just a small part of it. I collect information to use in my own way.”

Major Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell, 1995)

Where Kowloon Walled City once stood there now exists a park. The park was intended to be an open-air museum and walled garden built for the purpose of remembering the history of the site. However, the city and its citizens’ experiences of crime and unsanitary conditions go largely unmentioned and the memory of the city’s grim reality is all but erased from the very place it stood (Harter, 2000; Fraser & Li, 2017). Even the website dedicated to providing tourist information on the park only spared four brief lines for the city, ultimately summarising it as a “a labyrinth of dark, dank alleyways” (Hong Kong Tourism Board, 2018) and as of 2023 even this appears to have disappeared from the site. This is because the Walled City remains to be a source of embarrassment to the government of Hong Kong and people of the area so this sanitised approach to its history has become a common occurrence (Fraser & Li, 2017; Girard & Lambot, 2018). While its lawless nature is mentioned, four lines does no justice to the lived experience and wider influence of Kowloon Walled City.

Further evidence of the lack of desire in China and Hong Kong to preserve Kowloon Walled City’s memory is evident in the fact that the first Chinese-language publication about the city did not appear until 2015, the publication being a translation of Girard and Lambot’s 2014 book City of Darkness: Revisited (Girard & Lambot, 2014; Law, 2016). However, it is beyond China and Hong Kong where the Kowloon Walled City is most fervently remembered. An early example of this is that prior to the Chinese language translation, three books had been published in Japanese documenting the existence and destruction of the city (Law, 2016).

The Japanese fascination with the city is something that persists into the modern day. In 2009 an arcade by the name of the Anata no Warehouse (Translation: Your Warehouse) opened in Kawasaki. Anata no Warehouse was designed to look like Kowloon Walled City replete with neon Chinese lettering, narrow corridors, and mannequin prostitutes, as seen in figures 4 & 5 (Karlsson, 2017; Fraser & Li, 2017). It was designed by now-defunct company Hoshino Gumi, who brought in props such as post boxes directly from Hong Kong — to add a sense of realism to the “gloriously authentic-looking cyberpunk dystopia” (Johann, 2019). Before Anato no Warehouse shut down in late 2019 (due to issues with the landlord — which is somewhat ironic I guess given the issue of land ownership that helped create the Walled City) it was photographed and reported on for Asia Times by Tokyo based photographer Said Karlsson and fondly said farewell to on Frontline Gaming Japan’s site by corporate translator and gaming enthusiast Johann C.K.

(fig. 4 “The inside of this game centre is unlike any other” Photo: Said Karlsson 2017)

(fig. 5): “We’re not sure if this is a nod to the shady activities that took place within the Kowloon Walled City, or if it’s just supposed to depict one of the residents taking a nap” (Karlsson, 2017). Photo: Said Karlsson

Karlsson’s caption beginning “We’re not sure if this is a nod to the shady activities…” for figure 5, indicates a lack of certainty by the photographer regarding the nature of his subject. This illustrates the sense of mystery that the Walled City still brings and how little of its true reality is known, or at least widely admitted to. For 10 years the Anata no Warehouse stood as a testament to the mystery and fascination the dark and chaotic reality of Kowloon Walled City but arguably served as more of an entertaining reproduction rather than a historic monument.

As the line between history and memory has become distorted the cultural memory of Kowloon Walled City has altered. The Japanese nostalgia for the Walled City is proposed by Prof. Koichi Iwabuchi to have stemmed from the fact that Hong Kong (particularly Kowloon Walled City) modernised at a greater distance from Western influence than Japan did (Iwabuchi, 2002). The relative freedom and unrestrained lifestyle and architecture of the Walled City contrasted with highly regimented Japanese life and captured imaginations of writers and artists alike. As a result, aspects of Kowloon Walled City’s culture and history were consumed, reinterpreted, and ultimately dehistoricized to fulfil a nostalgic fantasy (ibid).

With the fulfilment of nostalgic fantasy comes an exclusion of certain aspects of a place’s history, in the case of Kowloon Walled City that aspect is its people. Hong Kong based writer Yu Yi’s City of Darkness (fig.6) provided one of the only popular culture interpretations that included references to the lived experience of the city. Despite growing up near the city, Yu Yi’s City of Darkness was itself only made possible through Japanese influence, when the author discovered images of the Kowloon Walled City in the Japanese edition of Girard and Lambot’s book (of which he directly lifted the title for his own work from) upon visiting Japan (Girard & Lambot, 2014). This provides us with an example of how cultural memory of the Walled City was largely created by the world outside of China — this can be in part attributed to many residents of Hong Kong regarding it as a ‘bad place’, whilst furthermore, the residents of the Walled City itself seldom owned up to living there. While Yu Yi’s depiction of the life of a fallen Triad leader did find commercial success and shed light on the human experience of life within the walls its impact pales in comparison to the examples that came from Japanese and Western creators.

The first major Kowloon Walled City inspired work to gain worldwide attention was Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell (Shirow, 1989). First serialised in 1989 as a manga Shirow’s creation truly marked its place in popular culture when it was recreated as a feature length animated film in 1995 (Oshii, 1995), when it proved to be one of the first Japanese productions to really penetrate Western popular culture. Kowloon Walled City was drawn upon as architectural inspiration for Niihama (the city in which Ghost in the Shell is set), with networks of cables (as is now present in a great number anime to the extent that there are Tumblr accounts dedicated to the phenomenon), narrow alleyways, and the presence of water at the lower levels of the city (fig.7).

Regarding life in the city however, there can be only a few tenuous parallels drawn such as the illegal mechanical body augmentations that take place in Niihama mirroring the illegal dentistry practices found in the Walled City. While Ghost in the Shell is largely about identity and memory in a changing world, the opportunity to discuss the lives of the people in the slums is missed and replaced by discussions on technology and terrorism.
However, the themes and influences of the manga and the film brings us to key point of this essay — Artistic creations such as Ghost in the Shell being so heavily inspired by the Walled City stand as an example of the hyperreal replacing the real.

Hyperreality is an exaggerated version of reality where something artificial becomes more definitive of the ‘real’ than the reality itself — in this case the cinematic interpretations of Kowloon Walled City defining its memory. Reality is replaced by a series of symbols representing reality, known as ‘simulacra’ (Baudrillard, 1994). Such symbols begin by reflecting a basic reality, these symbols then evolve to pervert the basic reality by ultimately becoming more real to the masses than the real version itself (ibid, p.3). This process works its way into cultural memory as realities of the past are manipulated by the desires of the present.

(fig. 6): Yu Yi and D. Szeto, City of Darkness, (Hong Kong: The One Comics Publisher Ltd, 2010) p. 126

(fig. 7): Niihama and Water from Ghost in the Shell (1995) dir: M. Oshii, Art dir: H. Ogura

As a result the symbolism presented in subsequent artistic interpretations of the original material (or the ‘reality’ in this case) leads to a distortion of memory. Symbolism and manipulations of reality, in the manner in which this essay means, can be found most blatantly in the world of American cinematic blockbusters. Ghost in the Shell received a big-budget Hollywood remake but it is not alone in taking inspiration from the Walled City. When creating Batman Begins Christopher Nolan focussed part of the story in an area of Gotham City called the ‘Narrows’. When describing the creation process Nolan stated: “From Hong Kong we took the ‘Walled City of Kowloon’ as the basis for the ‘Narrows’, which is this kind of walled-in slum.”. The Narrows were intended to illustrate the sense of lawlessness and chaos in Gotham, however the lives of people there are only hinted at briefly whilst, much like in our reality, the geography of the area provides more of a plot point. Batman Begins was far from the first blockbuster to use the Walled City for its geographical inspiration. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner took the built-up and artificially lit aspects of the city and weaved them into a futuristic dystopia (Fraser & Li, 2017; Shamdasani, 2017). While Scott did allude to elements such as prostitution in Blade Runner again the people of the city are never examined in detail (other than in general comparison to Replicants).

To compare - the primary sources discussed here focus more exclusively on the human element, how crime and poverty shaped their lives, and how out of their necessity to survive the city in turn took shape. In the secondary sources, people feature as a secondary feature to the sprawling masses of the cities they inhabit with crime as a something of a world-building element of the city. In short, people are central to the narratives of the primary sources whereas the city as a hyperreal element in and of itself is the central theme of the secondary sources.

The lawless life that allowed for the untamed architecture to develop does play into the creation of the hyperreality of the city up to the present day, particularly in the recent boom in the popularity of cyberpunk. The idea of cyberpunk had first made its way into popular conscience in the 80s (although inspired by the sci-fi of the 2 decades prior) — the “combination of lowlife and high tech” (Sterling, 1986) at the root of the genre took huge inspiration from the ingenuity (the guerrilla style power supplies etc) and the isolation (beyond the reach of laws) of Kowloon Walled City (Mead, 2014). In the 21st century this is, unsurprisingly, visible in the live action version of Ghost in the Shell, but also in video games. One of the most heavily influenced being Stray, a game in which you play as a cat navigating a post-human walled city (fig.8). Whilst amazingly faithful to the architecture of Kowloon Walled City, the complete absence of humans in the game (cats and robots are the main inhabitants) is a present day example of the human experience being left out at the expense of a city scape (re)created to imprint another new story on. Granted, however, the story is probably a useful warning pertaining to the unceasing destructive nature of humanity — still though the hyperreality of the city has continued to grow beyond its people.

(fig.8): Girard’s photography compared with a still from Stray by Blue Twelve Studio — taken from A. Dutta’s article

Through the cinematic and literary dystopias discussed, Kowloon Walled City has been remembered but the overwhelming majority of the cultural memory is based around the city’s unique and chaotic appearance. Its unfettered existence between East and West allowed it to grow into something previously unseen and barely understood. This half-known nature of Kowloon Walled City provided the perfect breeding ground for fantasy, nostalgia, and desire. The unpleasant aspects of the lives of the people of the Walled City, the crime, the drugs, and the corruption, have been allowed to fade — either treated as an inconvenient truth by the colonial powers that failed to claim sovereignty of the land or impose any kind of rule over its inhabitants, or seldom mentioned by its former inhabitants who having suffered prejudice for having lived there have left that part of their lives behind since the destruction of the city. As a result the main memory of the city is that of its physical uniqueness, this has allowed artists and writers over time to imprint their own versions of the city into the imagination of the world and in turn has enabled the rehistoricising of Kowloon Walled City.

Conclusion — Kowloon today, nostalgic fantasy, and dystopian future

This essay set out to explore how the cultural memory of Kowloon Walled City has developed since its destruction and how the hyperreal version of the city endures beyond the lived experience of its citizens. The primary sources heavily focussed on the lived experience of the people — their lives constantly bordered by crime, corruption, and unhygienic surroundings. Whereas the secondary sources focussed heavily on the untamed architecture of the city and its influence on sci-fi dystopias. The difference between primary and secondary sources illustrated how the human element of the city gradually drifted from the centre of attention whilst the idea of the city and the structure itself claimed more of the outside world’s fascination — fuelled by its place beyond laws allowing it to grow both chaotically and somewhat organically as its people chose — the stories and air of mystery of the city allowing it to become a jumping-off-point for the imaginations of many.

In the essay the expectation that cultural memory regarding the city had grown to revolve around its unregulated, dark, and mysterious appearance was met but the reason as to why this occurred developed and changed as research and writing progressed. The theory of the city being simply an unwanted memory by British colonialists, Chinese officials, and by modern day Hong Kong (as discussed by Lord Kennet et al in the House of Lords and in Harter’s 2000 work) began to be obscured by other factors. For example, Kowloon Walled City becoming both a symbol of nostalgia and freedom to a highly regimented and modernised Japanese society (Iwabuchi, 2002). As a result, the appearance of the city became a key influence in artistic and literary renditions of an imagined future which set out to fulfil a nostalgic fantasy in Japan. Such interpretations found their way into Western media where the cityscape came to represent chaos and darkness, as is evident in Blade Runner and Batman Begins and continued to inspire dystopic visions of future cities in video games up to the present day. These futuristic and fantastical interpretations became the hyperreality that replaced the grim poverty and drug-dependent reality of Kowloon Walled City seen in Pullinger (1989), Girard, and Lambot’s works (1993, 2014).

Ultimately, its unregulated existence led to other cultures being able to build their own ideas and impress their desired realities onto Kowloon Walled City. Its status as a place of darkness and mystery has eventually led to its own memory becoming distorted to fit the desired narratives of the creators utilizing its memory. Cultural memory of Kowloon Walled City has moved away from the reality of the city but its mark has been indelible and as long as futuristic visions of built-up cities exist, a fragment of the City of Darkness remains within them, its people and poverty largely forgotten but its existence ultimately remembered.

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