1974 Sun Sun Co. Plan of Kowloon, Hong Kong

A brightly colored, large-format 1974 Sun Sun bilingual street plan or map of Kowloon, Hong Kong. It provides a snapshot of the city as it underwent notable changes in the late British colonial period, including the opening of the Cross Harbour Tunnel, an extension of Kai Tak Airport, and land reclamation projects.

A Closer Look

Displaying the Kowloon Peninsula, this highly detailed plan is color-shaded to distinguish residential and commercial areas, proposed streets, and parks. Additionally, lines and symbols mark out rail, streetcar (red), and bus lines, along with piers, ferry lines, tunnels, pedestrian bridges, pedestrian stairways (ladders), and more. Schools, police stations, hospitals, hotels, large apartment complexes (flats, mansions, estates), cemeteries, barracks ('W. D. Area'), and other military facilities are labeled throughout in both English and Chinese. A grid surrounds the map, corresponding to Chinese and English indexes on the verso. The verso displays more recent development and land reclamation to the east in Kwun Tong.

At bottom-left is an inset of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, opened in 1972, a significant development as earlier travel between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island could only be accomplished by ferry. Kai Tak Airport, famous for its harrowing landings just above the tops of high-rise apartments, stands out prominently on the right. At this time, it was completing an extension of the runway (marked here as under construction) and other upgrades, its last major renovation before closing in 1998. Other signs of development are clear throughout, including reclaimed land, proposed new streets, and a new station for the Canton-Kowloon Railway (at Hung Hom, replacing the early 20th-century terminus at Tsim Sha Tsui), complete with its own ferry pier.

Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, not all the sites are written in both Chinese and English. In some places, this appears to be due to lack of space, but elsewhere might be due to embarrassment or a presumed lack of interest from any English-speaking users. Most notably, the notorious Chunking Mansions (重慶大廈), a fascinating and notorious site known for its cosmopolitan mix of cultures, foods, and goods, as well as being a center of drugs, human trafficking, and smuggling, is left untranslated.

Kowloon Walled City

The Kowloon Walled City, here as 'Kowloon City' 九龍城, appears just northwest of Kai Tak Airport. The origins of the walled city date back to the Song Dynasty; the area had been used for government offices and fortifications since that time. After the arrival of the British on Hong Kong Island in the early 1840s, the Qing government used the Kowloon Walled City to monitor the nearby foreign presence. Even still, when Kowloon was ceded to Britain in 1860, and the New Territories leased in 1898, the Qing were allowed to continue to station officials there, along with a population of several hundred civilians, and the walled city became an enclave of Chinese sovereign territory. Unsurprisingly, this occasionally caused tensions, as when British troops raided the area in 1899, suspecting it was being used as a base for resistance to their rule over Hong Kong and Kowloon.

The fortified area remained a sticking point between Britain and China for the next century, until the eve of Hong Kong's handover to Chinese sovereignty. As the British were unsure of what to do with it but reluctant to grant the Chinese government full control over the enclave, the area became home to many squatters and refugees from conflicts in the mainland, as well as a hotbed of organized crime and drugs. The Japanese destroyed the wall during World War II to build Kai Tak Airport, but the layout and name of the area remained. After the war, the area's population skyrocketed as refugees fled the Chinese Civil War on the mainland, likely making it the most densely populated neighborhood in an already very densely populated city. Ramshackle apartment buildings were set up with no safety standards, leading to many fires and the risk of buildings collapsing. Structures were lined up with no space between them, and residents built passageways across roofs and between buildings so that one could transit the entire 2.6-hectare area without ever touching the ground. Less so than proper streets, groups of buildings were separated by alleyways so narrow that residents could shake hands with their neighbors on the other side of the street.

The area became a symbol of British indifference to poverty in Hong Kong, prompting efforts to reduce crime and institute basic safety and health standards, part of a wider anti-poverty campaign in the last years of British rule. Eventually, on the eve of Britain's handover of Hong Kong, it was decided to demolish the area and replace it with a park. To Chinese nationalists, the walled city was a clear manifestation of imperial aggression against China and British apathy towards the people of Hong Kong, as well as a product of the perversions caused by leased territories on Chinese land. But since the area's demolition and Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty, a degree of nostalgia has developed towards the Kowloon Walled City, part of a wider idealization of the ad hoc, chaotic, and even lawless nature of 'Old Hong Kong' in contrast to the increasingly austere, efficient, and tightly controlled society that has emerged since 1997.

Publication History and Census

This map was produced and published by the Sun Sun Co. (新新 meaning 'new new') in 1974. It is unclear if this company had any connection with an earlier department store of the same name based in Shanghai, which also produced maps. This edition of the map is noted among the holdings of Harvard University, Auburn University, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, the University of Kansas, and the University of Hong Kong.