Kowloon Walled City Park

Description:

• For its titillating past, Kowloon City Walled City Park is a poor remnant of what the place used to be as a triad stronghold, notorious for its excess of brothels, casinos, opium dens, cocaine parlors and secret factories. During its heydays, authorities turned a blind eye towards the squatter settlement. Over the years, many films depicted Kowloon City Walled City when they wanted to convey a sense of ominous foreboding. Square buildings folded up into one another as thousands of modifications were made, virtually none by architects or engineers, until the entire City became monolithic. In 1992, after all 30,000 inhabitants of the drug-ridden high-rise slums on the 90-by-100 meter site had been re-housed, the area was cleared to make way for the park with its old almshouse and Chinese-style gardens. Nowadays it is underground triad fights are no longer seen around the area, instead replaced by the old who sit in the park, remembering the old days. In the park itself the stone plaques from the Old South Gate remain and are the only remainder of what Kowloon City Walled City used to be.
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