Kowloon Walled City
Kowloon Walled City (Chinese: 九龍城寨) was an extremely densely populated and largely lawless enclave within the boundaries of Kowloon City of former British Hong Kong. Built as an imperial Chinese military fort, the walled city became an enclave of the Qing dynasty in 1898, when the New Territories were leased to the United Kingdom. Due to disagreements with the British authorities and political instability within China around the time, neither took jurisdiction over the enclave, creating a power vacuum.
Its population increased dramatically after the end of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II, attracting mostly refugees fleeing the renewed Chinese Civil War.
By the late 1980s, the walled city contained roughly 35,000 residents within its territory of 2.6 hectares (6+1⁄2 acres), equivalent to a population density of approximately 1.2 million inhabitants per square kilometre (3 million inhabitants per square mile). As a result of the absence of any widely recognized bureaucracy, the city's residents and businesses had no municipal codes to govern them. Enabled by the enclave's anarchic nature, trade in banned products thrived, ranging from narcotics to dog meat. From the 1950s to the 1970s, it was controlled by local triad gangs and had high rates of prostitution, gambling, and drug abuse.
In January 1987, the British colonial government announced plans to demolish the walled city. After an arduous eviction process and the transfer of de jure sovereignty of the enclave from China to Britain, demolition began in March 1993 and was completed in April 1994. Kowloon Walled City Park opened in December 1995 and occupies the area of the former walled city. Some historical artefacts from the walled city, including its yamen building and remnants of its southern gate, have been preserved there.
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