With the cooler, not-quite-as-sticky fall weather in Hong Kong, we are venturing out again into the city for sight-seeing and exploring. On Thursday this week we decided to go to the famous Walled City of Kowloon.
The Walled City is one of the oldest parts of Hong Kong and was originally built to manage the production of salt during the Song Dynasty about 1000 AD. (As checked out on Wikipedia.) It was used as a fortress against invading armies and for various other reasons. As late as 1987, the city was densely populated and was largely governed by the Triads and the home for drug lords, prostitutes, gambling rings and other unsavory activities and had deplorable living conditions for its residents. In 1992 the Walled City was evacuated and demolished and in 1995 the Walled City Park was opened. It contains remnants of the old walled city, but is now mostly a lovely garden setting.
We had heard that getting the the Walled City was somewhat complicated and involved bus and train transfers. But upon checking it out on my google map app, I discovered that we could ride on Bus 13 right to the park. Mystified about this elusive bus 13, we checked with a pleasant young woman who works in the lobby of our apartment building and she directed us to the back-side of the apartment courtyard. Sure enough, there was an obscure sign announcing the stop for mini-bus 13, which came whipping around the corner a few minutes later. We boarded the empty bus along with another young woman.
What followed was my favorite part of the day…the bus ride to the Walled City of Kowloon Park. We traveled a circuitous route through the Wampoa district, just north of where our apartment is located, and saw parts of our community we hadn’t visited before. The streets were teaming with shoppers and shop keepers, construction workers and barriers. Passengers got on and off the bus at regular intervals.
We had quickly learned that the bus driver spoke no English, so we asked the young woman we had boarded with how to say “Walled City” in Cantonese. She yelled our intended destination to the driver and the two of them yelled back and forth to each other in Chinese for several minutes, apparently about how to pronounce Walled City. These little buses hold 16 passengers and ours was soon full. Mysteriously, the news that the funny looking white people were going to the Walled City was passed onto all every other passenger that boarded the bus, and they all took personal responsibility to take care of us. As we neared our destination, our fellow travelers let us know with much pointing and pantomime how many stops until ours. When we finally did arrive at our designated stop, each passenger seemed invested in making sure we landed on the sidewalk safely.
Since we had passed the park just before our stop, we turned to walk back the way we had come, when suddenly we heard a horn honk behind us. Turning around, we found that every passenger on the bus, and the driver, was frantically pointing forward! Apparently they knew we needed to walk another block before we could cross the busy road to go back to the park. It was like living in a comic strip and we laughed about it the rest of the day.
The Walled City Park was beautiful, but just as we accidentally found the entrance to the remnants of the actual Walled City, Gaylon announced that he needed to find a bathroom, so we began to search for one.
Here’s some of the sights we found on our way to a TOILET:
We finally found what we had been looking for at the end of the trail. See if you can spy Grandpa Ball in one of these photos.
After our Walled City adventure, we spent the afternoon at Gold Coast Beach, checking out the great Gold Coast Beach Hotel and yachts and walking along the water front.
The temple was more quiet this week, and we spent a lot of time preparing for a busy week coming up.
Thanks for your comments!
Love and prayers from Hong Kong,
Elder and Sister Ball
Hong Kong Temple Mission 