I came across a video on Youtube discussing it (there are several), and Kowloon Walled City is just endlessly fascinating. A few notable videos I found on the subject were:
Kowloon Walled City: Hong Kong’s City of Darkness
Inside Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City
There is also a book on the city called City Of Darkness Life In Kowloon Walled City, which I found on archive.org in high resolution. It is full of photographs and detailed accounts of the comings and goings within the enclave.
I most recently encountered this fact from the game, Stray! You know, the recent game with the cat and all the robots. Apparently their city design was heavily inspired by the Kowloon Walled City.
Absolutely love Stray. The world design was fantastic
Apparently it was inspired by Kowloon walled city!
Oh wow, TIL!
Pretty much the entire game of Shadowrun: Hong Kong revolves around Kowloon Walled city and it’s one of my favourite games.
Goddamn, I played and loved the first two Shadowruns by Harebrained, and then left Hong Kong at the start due to lack of time. Reading this makes me want to puck it up immediately!
It’s definitely my favourite of the 3.
Shadowrun: Hong Kong is good, but in my opinion Dragonfall was the best.
Dragonfall is a real gem indeed. Lots of heart and good ideas in the setting and characters. I really hope they continue the series.
I wish a game developer would make a realistic representation open world of Kowloon Walled City that I could just explore
According to the second video I linked, a resident of Kowloon spent the better part of six years mapping out the city. Here’s the timestamp: https://youtu.be/PcSBOUpgngM?t=794
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/PcSBOUpgngM?t=794
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
In a Digimon game on the switch there’s a level called Kowloon. It is represented as what is described here and I’m grateful to have learned the real world connection
You talking about Cyber Sleuth? It’s available on PC, PS4, Vita (which I think is where it first launched), along with the switch you mentioned.
Please be aware that plenty of games on the switch are actually multiplatform. We don’t want people not checking out a game because they think it’s only on the switch.
We don’t want people not checking out a game because they think it’s only on the switch.
We? Is there some secret Game Reccomendation Governing Body in charge of how to recommend something properly?
If someone wants to play a game, it’s on them to research the game and how they can play it on their own consoles. It’s unfair to put the responsibility on the recommender for knowing every single possible platform a game could be played on.
I appreciate that you commented and provided extra information for other potential players. But IMO, your tone implies that OP provided this recommendation incorrectly, which I don’t think is justified.
I love this place. I remember the first time ever learning about it, in some book I had as a child. Such an interesting history and fascinating that so many people lived in such cramped density.
All it reminds me of is the original Blade Runner.
Curiously, in cyberpunk media this sort of mega-slum is often portrayed as an excess of capitalist urbanization, whereas in historical reality
it was an exclave of “communist” China inserted into “capitalist” British Hong Kong, wherein the “capitalist” authorities had no jurisdiction.(Edited: Sounds more like the point was that it was effectively nobody’s jurisdiction.)
What the fuck are you talking about? In actual reality it was a product of capitalism. Specifically British imperialist capitalism in China. It took until the mid 80’s (40 years after the Communists came to power) for the British to allow China to have control over the area and it was turned in to a park less than a decade later, clearly indicating that the Communists were in no way interested in continuing the existence of the dystopian walled city.
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Sorry, are you saying the British Hong Kong authorities had any jurisdiction there?
With no government enforcement from the Chinese or the British aside from a few raids by the Hong Kong Police, the walled city became a haven for crime and drugs. It was only during a 1959 trial for a murder that occurred within the walled city that the Hong Kong government was ruled to have jurisdiction there.
The KMT repeatedly sent requests to reclaim the entire region but Imperial Britain pretty much refused (they proposed a ton of alternative solutions) and didn’t govern it either. So yes, it’s Imperial Britain’s fault. Since the day Britain agreed to transfer the territory to the CCP there was a declared intent to demolish the place.
It’s more accurate to say that the British prevented either themselves (through inaction) or China (by treaty/law) from having any practical control. If you’d bother to read the wiki article OP linked you’d know. China should have had jurisdication, but Britain techincally had (imperialist) jurisdication. The result was a no-man’s land until Britain finally gave up.
EDIT: missed a word
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The Chinese government never actually had any authority there. It was completely within Hong Kong, and the British didn’t let them go there.
Wouldn’t this be more of an example of anarchism, since the city functioned without any planning or input from a centralized authority?
Can you walk me through how you arrived at the idea that Kowloon was a product of communism, and explain when and why the Chinese decided to insert it into Hong Kong? Sorry if I’m a bit slow, but what you wrote runs counter to everything I thought I knew about the topic.
