August 3 2007 - Kowloon Walled City Park

Yesterday I visited a park up in Kowloon that has an interesting history. The park is built on the site of the former Kowloon Walled City. This area of Hong Kong was originally a Chinese Fort (it used to be close to Kowloon Bay, but reclamation makes that hard to imagine now), then a British walled garrison and then a Chinese community. Its jurisdiction was disputed. At one point the British ceded jurisdiction of the area to the Chinese government, but at the end of the Qing Dynasty (the last one before the Nationalists and subsequently the Communists took power) there was a lot of war and unrest, so the Chinese didn’t really bother to govern the area either. The area ended up being controlled by triads (Chinese mafia) and all sorts of illicit activity took place there. It was very densely populated. Pictures of Kowloon Walled City from the 1950’s make it look like one giant building (it was an area of about 6 city blocks) but it really was dozens of buildings tightly packed together with tiny passageways in between them.

Here is a website with lots of information about the city and some very interesting pictures: http://www.archidose.org/KWC/.

It was a mysterious dangerous place, and very different from the rest of Hong Kong. In the 1980’s the issues of jurisdiction were finally resolved and the Hong Kong government decided to tear it down. For once Hong Kong did an urban renewal program properly. They preserved the oldest buildings in the Walled City, plus remnants of the original walls, and the north and south gates. The park is split into 8 areas, each with a different theme. You can wander around the park, learn about the history of the area, and enjoy the beautiful gardens, ponds and plantings, interspersed with old walls and buildings, plus a couple of cannons from the old fort!

The park seems to be very well used. I went pretty early (around 8 AM) because it has been so hot here. The park was filled with people doing tai chi (of course), maids walking babies, old men playing chess, or talking, or meditating, old ladies strolling slowly with their umbrellas, staying in the shade.

I was the only westerner. An older man came up to me and decided to tell me about the park in his halting English. He was looking for practice. I had to hand it to him; if I would start doing that my Cantonese would probably be a lot better by now! He was a bit of a pest though. I was enjoying my solitary wandering about in the park and he kept popping up like a jack rabbit with another tidbit of fractured English!

I posted pictures of my trip to the park in Flickr.

When I got back to Central I called Lee to see if he wanted anything from the grocery store. He said “hey, your daughter called and wants you to know that she and Erik aren’t dead!” I was like “what are you talking about”? The Minneapolis I-35 Bridge had collapsed while I was strolling through the park. I immediately called Nicole and found that she was okay, just a little shook up. Her apartment is close to that bridge, and she rides her bike to work underneath it every day. And Cody was at the Twins game…very strange. Sarah said all of her friends were okay, and as far as we know all of the 3Mers are okay too.

This time of year in Hong Kong is kind of slow. There aren’t a lot of AWA tours. The hiking hasn’t started up again yet – too hot. I’ve been doing Yoga, and a little shopping. I’m going to Shenzhen next week now that my China Visa has been renewed, but I think my Shenzhen shopping days have definitely slowed down. I’m peeved about the quality of some stuff I’ve gotten there – purses where the zippers broke, etc. I’ve also been playing mahjong more consistently. That’s a good hot weather activity! And we’ve gone to the beach several times, and I’ve hung out at the pool. I COULD be doing more constructive activities, but I don’t really feel like it. I think it’s the heat!

It’s SOOOO beautiful here right now though. You just have to get out early if you want to do something outside…