Cynthia Eng - Nov. 1
Shelter + Water - Kowloon Walled City
Girard, Greg and Ian Lambot. City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. 5th ed. Watermark Publications (UK) Limited, 2001.
- Water was the most indispensible survival need for people in this self-contained city
- As they did back in the old ancestral village, 77 wells sunk all around the City, with depths of some 300 feet
- “Electric pumps shot water up to great tanks on the roof-tops, from where it descending via an ad hoc forest of narrow pipes to the homes of subscribers” (10)
- City was very dark and damp
- “It was impossible to stand upright because the roof of the alley was lined with a confusion of plastic pipes carrying water, many of them dripping” (12)
- “Government’s longstanding refusal to connect buildings, flats, and factories into the external mains system
- Possible reasons: technical difficulties, disruption, reluctance to further encourage permanent settlement in City
- “Residents and businesses have had to resort to paying private suppliers, to pump water from wells sunk beneath the City, or local Triad groups from water tapped illegally from nearby mains supplies” (36)
- “Running mains water was supplied to various recognized charities inside the Walled City” (36)
- Authorities allowed installation of a few public freshwater stand-pipes, just eight stand-pipes in place by 1987, to supply up to 35,000 residents and hundreds of factories, only one of these stand-pipes was located within the City
- First stand-pipe installed in 1963
- “Residents were paying $12-15 a month for labourers to carry six kerosene cans of water each day from the stand-pipes to their flats”
- “Business of carrying water for entire households became increasingly difficult the more the City grew skywards, during the boom days of the late 1960s and early ‘70s”
- This expanding demand “drove entrepreneurs underground to tap new sources.
- “The new well diggers were mainly property owners who were able to drill on their own land (37)
- 1987, 67 working wells owned by some 40 suppliers
- 300 ‘scientific wells’ said to have been sunk beneath area though many had dried from overuse
- “Recent drillings had to reach as far as 100 metres since shallow sources had been depleted
- Private drilling firms contracted to carry out work
- Water first pumped up to rudimentary storage tanks on City roofscape
- From there, pipes ran downward again branching into blocks and flats
- Installation of a well-water link could cost as much a several thousand dollars, depending on height above and distance from well
- By late 1980s, monthly charges between $50-$70 per household
- Water problems: because of pressure and pumping difficulties, pumps only turned on at set times, usually noon and midnight, to replenish tanks
- Meant residents still had to store water in baths and buckets
- Well-water mostly undrinkable because impregnated with usual seepage of urban and industrial pollutants, water not even fit to boil
- 1970s, underground sources, especially from shallower wells, contaminated by sewage seepage
- Well-water best used for washing and floor-cleaning
- Drinking and cooking water still had to be carried from stand-pipes, a small workforce engaged in this activity till the end
- Illegal tappings of mains water from outside City, monopolized in the beginning by the Triads
- Triad organizations also responsible for much of the construction in the City, they ensured newer buildings had some rudimentary provision for water supply and waste
- “In time Triads sold off most of their ‘business interest in the City but illegal tapping of mains water remained an important source of drinking water until the end” (38)
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