Curious Flock to See Hong Kong’s Teeming Walled City Before Demolition Begins : Hong Kong’s Walled City Draws Curious

The notorious Walled City, a squalid enclave whose dark alleyways once were the domain of prostitutes, opium addicts and fugitives, is attracting tourists and students these days.

They wind through virtual tunnels made by buildings squeezed too close together for sunlight or vehicles to enter. They dodge open sewers and dripping pipes in the rancid air to see the sinkhole of vice before it becomes a park.

Hong Kong announced plans three years ago to raze the seven-acre district, just a short walk from the international airport, as soon as its 33,000 residents could be relocated. Officials believe that it was the world’s most densely populated area.

The city wall itself won’t come tumbling down. Japanese occupation forces took it apart during World War II and used the stones for an airport runway.

Since the plans to make a park were announced, “we have had almost daily busloads of tourists visiting the Walled City,” said Herman Cho, an official of the relocation program. “You cannot deny the Walled City has unique features.”

Many groups venture only to the perimeter to take pictures of the jumble of high-rise buildings.

Other tourists walk alleyways slick with water dripping from a canopy of overhead pipes for closer inspection of a slum that, despite its wretchedness, is rich in history.

“I’ve been in the worst slums in New York and they’re not this bad,” said Christopher Lok, 15, of Ridgefield, Conn., touring the neighborhood with his 10th-grade classmates from the Hong Kong International School.

The enclave on the Kowloon Peninsula across the harbor from Hong Kong island once was a Qing dynasty fort and administrative center protected by a 13-foot wall.

In 1898, Britain leased Kowloon from China for 99 years along with Hong Kong, but the two countries could not agree on who would control the Walled City.

Few problems arose for half a century because the seven acres were sparsely populated, but thousands of squatters poured into the contested neighborhood after World War II, claiming that they were under Chinese jurisdiction.

Britain’s colonial government, which did not want to antagonize Beijing, seldom bothered them. The result has been relative chaos in a very small space.

Residents of the Walled City have not paid property taxes or registered their businesses, which include dozens of unlicensed dentists and doctors. They have put up buildings without government approval, which are crammed with people who cannot afford the higher rents elsewhere in Hong Kong.

When Britain agreed that Hong Kong would be returned to China in 1997, the jurisdictional dispute evaporated and the colonial government announced plans to demolish its main urban eyesore.

Nearly 14,000 residents have moved out of the Walled City under a compensation program costing the equivalent of $295 million, and the process is expected to be complete by mid-1991.

The brothels, opium dens and gambling halls have long since gone, and officials say walking the maze of dim, dank lanes is safe.

Rarely does one meet a character more sinister than a schoolgirl on her way to class or see anything more frightening than a rat. On certain afternoons, several men play classical Chinese music on traditional instruments in a room off Old Folks Road, the main alley.

There are no maps, and the alleys are marked only in Chinese, but it is difficult to get lost. Most paths eventually lead to the outside.

Factories producing food, such as fish balls and noodles, are everywhere. Sweating, bare-chested men in their 20s, wearing boots because of the muck on the floor, make small blocks of coagulated pig blood in one shop.

Across the lane, Madame Chan, 58, sits in a bamboo chair all day in front of a cell-sized apartment for which she pays the equivalent of $51 a month.

“The ventilation is very poor and that makes me ill,” she complains.