Humidity enveloped my clothing in a blanket of sweat as I trudged from the subway stop, taking great care to follow the path delineated in my Kowloon walking tour map. Halfway through a week in Hong Kong and its surrounds, I was ready to throw in the towel. My feet hurt from several days of walking, my legs bore the wrath of a thousand mosquitos, and my head barely held itself up in the wake of jet lag.
To put it colloquially, I was a hot mess.
Arriving at the park entrance, I glanced at my brochure. “Kowloon Walled City Park… Chinese-style park… yadda yadda… pre-war concrete relics… yadda yadda… The Garden of the Chinese Zodiac, the Chess Garden, the Mountain View Pavilion… other landscape features worth appreciation.”
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Having already hiked the scenic Tai Long Wan and explored the urban oasis of Hong Kong Park, this park had nothing to offer in comparison. Alone in my exasperation, I wandered through the garden desperate for a place to sit, bored at the umpteenth pagoda I had already seen on this trip. Like any typical Asian, I pointed my camera at the scenery, snapping photos mindlessly.
My thoughts were interrupted by an elderly Asian man donning a long black shirt and jeans.
“Do you want me to take your photo?” he asked.
“Sure…” I replied in trepidation.
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Wait, how did he know that I didn’t speak Cantonese? In the several days since I arrived to China, I had not yet encountered a single resident who didn’t assume I was from Hong Kong.
My suspicious instincts kicked in, but it felt rude to say no. I stood poised and cautious, ready to run after the man if he decided to take off with the camera. He suggested I take several pictures, posing me in various places as I stood rigidly with a half-smile. He gave my camera back. ”My name is Uncle Man. Are you from the United States?”
“Why yes,” I said.
“I went to the United States before. To Las Vegas. They showed my art at the MGM Hotel,” he claimed.
“How nice,” I said, just barely disguising my disinterest. I couldn’t help but think there was some ulterior motive to this whole conversation.
“Here. Stand this way.” Uncle Man turned me to my right, then pulled out a blue piece of foil and began to rip at it. After a few minutes, he presented it to me. ”For you,” he said, sliding the piece of paper into a small plastic sleeve. I looked at it. He had hand-torn a silhouette of my face into the foil.
I could manage few words in my awe. ”Wow. Thank you.”
I looked up from his gift. ”So, you from Hong Kong?” My attempt at small talk felt very feeble at that point.
“Yeah, I love coming to this park,” he replied. ”Very peaceful. I used to live around here.” With that, he wished me a nice day and walked off, whipping out a flute and playing himself off into the day.
* * *
Many months after returning to the States, I found myself killing time in a tiny bookstore. A large picture book caught my eye. City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City.
Inside were photos and illustrations documenting Kowloon Walled City, one of the most famous slums in the history of modern civilization, a high-rise shanty town with more than 30,000 residents — mostly immigrants — living and working within the 6.5-acre area. Apartments sat atop factories, cobblers atop grocery stores, unlicensed dentists atop Triad-run drug dens, all interconnected via an Escher-esque maze of ladders, bridges and alleys. The sheer density of this place was such that sunlight could not reach its deepest recesses; those on the ground level lived in perpetual darkness.
The Hong Kong government demolished the walled city in 1993, leaving behind a few relics from its 19th-century days as a Chinese military fort. Any trace of seedy history was wiped clean and replaced with a meticulously manicured park.
It hit me. Kowloon. Park. ”Oh my god, I’ve been here before!”
How could I have missed this incredible piece of Hong Kong’s history? I went home to dig up my Wong Tai Sin/Kowloon City walking tour map. The pamphlet was as vague as I had remembered. I thumbed through my old travel journal to see if I had jotted down any notes.
“Kowloon Walled City Park — Met the coolest guy. Uncle Man.”
Tucked into the back of my journal was the foil silhouette, still encased in a plastic sleeve. I tried Googling the name and the style of art, but to no avail. Who was this mysterious Uncle Man? Was he really a famous artist? Could he have lived in the fabled Kowloon Walled City?
So many unanswered questions.
* * *
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.”
— Albert Einstein
Captivating. The time I spent reading this account I felt transported to a place far away.