The Walled City

Author’s Note

The Walled City was real.

A very real, unreal city.

I first learned about its existence when I went to hear a woman named Jackie Pullinger speak. She spent nearly twenty years living and working in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City. The place she described — a sunless, lawless shanty-town overrun by gangs — sounded like a setting straight out of a dystopian fantasy. My imagination began racing (as it tends to do). I started thinking about all the different types of people who lived in the Kowloon Walled City: the street kids, the prostitutes, the fugitives, the ruthless gangsters. Storylines rose out of nowhere. Wove together into a story I couldn’t put down.

This book does not fit into the category of historical fiction, and was never intended to. While I did extensive research on the actual Kowloon Walled City, and tried to portray it as closely as possible, I also employed artistic license to convey the story I wanted to tell. This can be seen in the name changes (Hong Kong became Seng Ngoi, for example), the timeline of the Walled City’s eviction and demolition, Seng Ngoi’s judicial system, and the specific operations of the Brotherhood of the Red Dragon.

Another thing savvy readers might notice is how I handled characters’ names. Names in the Kowloon Walled City were generally in Cantonese, with a single-syllable surname (such as Sun) and a double-syllable given name (such as Jin Ling or Mei Yee). In Hong Kong today, it’s not unheard of to shorten the given name to a single-syllable nickname (as Jin does, to maintain her disguise), though back when the Kowloon Walled City existed, this practice was not common. But for the purposes of the story I wanted to tell, I chose to shorten some names throughout. Some of the names also had Japanese or Mandarin origins, depending on where the characters are from. I also feel it’s worth mentioning that although the term Mama-san has negative connotations in the US today, it was the traditional title used for women who managed brothels in the Kowloon Walled City, where there was some Japanese influence because of Japan’s occupation of Hong Kong during World War II.

Apart from the things mentioned above, I do believe the reality and the fiction are not all that different. Both Hak Nam and Kowloon started their lives as military forts. Both grew so thick and fast that the sunlight could no longer reach the streets. Both housed powerful gangs and over 33,000 people in their cramped borders (it was 6.5 acres, only 0.0102 square miles). Both were eventually torn down by the government and turned into a park. In fact, the decision to demolish the real Kowloon Walled City was announced on January 14, 1987. The exact day and year I was born.

Although I was never able to see the real Walled City, I was fortunate enough to visit the park built in its place. The space is small and manicured, filled with remnants of the neighborhood: cannons, the crumbling ruins of the South Gate, a metal replica of the old city, a bonsai tree garden, and even (on my visit) a tailless cat. Should you ever find yourself in Hong Kong, it’s well worth taking the time to visit this site.

The Walled City might be gone, but human trafficking is not. According to a 2006 UNICEF report, nearly two million children have been trafficked into the sex trade. Some, like Mei Yee, are even sold by members of their own family. To learn more about this issue and how you might be able to help, I suggest visiting the website of the International Justice Mission, a human rights agency dedicated to rescuing victims of trafficking and providing them with legal protection. You can find it at ijm.org.