It’s t-minus ten hours before I wake up at 4am for a direct flight to Hong Kong via Cathay Pacific, and I am as excited as an intravenous drug user who’s won a lifetime supply of needles, to put it mildly. Here’s one reason why: a mere 2.0km from where I’ll be living in HK is a place that once housed one of the biggest dildo factories in the world. According to Martin Booth’s The Dragon Syndicates: The Global Phenomenon of the Triads,
In the 1980s, [Kowloon Walled City][1] contained one of the biggest manufacturers of rubber penises in the world: to visit the factory was like entering a bizarre, Salvador Dali-esque subterranean world, with racks of latex male organs hanging up to dry like sausages in a butcher’s shop.
A treaty in 1898 ceding HK to Britain didn’t include Kowloon Walled City, but the Brits got greedy and attacked it anyway in 1899. They found it deserted (and most likely too trashy and tacky too) and ignored it. For the next 93 years, both the PRC and Britain neglected the ghetto. Police forces were absent, organized crime in the form of Triads moved into the city in the late 1940s, and laws simply didn’t exist. The result was incredible.
By 1987, 50,000 people were living on a 26,000 square meter plot of land. This was one of the most densely populated places on Earth. The city grew as residents added extensions onto their apartments until the entire city became a huge labyrinthine monolith of twisting corridors and ingrown complexes. Brothels, casinos, opium dens, cocaine parlors, and janky factories of all sorts operated in broad daylight, if any of it ever managed to reach the bottom floors.
In 1993, both the UK and China couldn’t stand the sight of Kowloon Walled City anymore. Understandably, it wasn’t very good for PR or tourism. So they kicked everyone out, demolished it, and replaced it with a park. Can you spell “boring”? In some ways, I wish the old city were still there. I would’ve visited for sure.
Fortunately, Booth’s book has given me plenty of other sketchy places to explore and illicit activities to participate in during my stay in HK. Aside from the author’s somewhat condescending, white-man’s-burden tone, The Dragon Syndicates presents a tremendously detailed account of Triad history, rituals, and vices. According to Booth, as of 1999, Triads are on the rise as an extremely sophisticated and prevalent form of organized crime. This means nearly everything I touch and consume for the next ten weeks, from the Cathay Pacific plane I take to the dim sum I eat, will be in some way produced, financed, or affiliated with a Triad group.
When I arrive, Booth says the HK International Airport I’ll be standing in allegedly paid millions of dollars worth of “protection” money to Triads. When I watch a HK movie, I’ll remember Booth describing how Neil MacDonald, a location production manager for the drama series Cracker was abducted in full view of the crew” while filming in HK’s Wanchai neighborhood. He was then
robbed of a Rolex watch and gold chain and ordered to pay HK$4,000 for a round of drinks. When it was discovered that he did not carry sufficient cash…he was divested of some of his clothing, which was sent back to the film crew with the message that if the money was not forthcoming, MacDonald would have his legs broken.
As if all this excitement weren’t enough, I can also seek out explicit places of Triad influence in HK.
I can walk down Upper Lascar Row, nicknamed Cat Street for its Triad-run bordellos. I can visit Red Lips Bar in Tsim Sha Tsui, the last girlie bar (a bar where patrons could pick-up women employed in the oldest industry known to man) to close down in HK. I can sing in the Top One karaoke club in Kowloon where, in 1997, 17 people burned to death when a Triad society fire-bombed it in retribution against the owner. I can pay US$5 for a CD filled with pirated software worth over US$2,000 in Kowloon’s “Golden Shopping Arcade.”
The Dragon Syndicates is not a suspenseful page-turner. It’s a bit academic but very thoroughly researched (albeit from an outsider’s point of view). I wonder how the Triads have made out in the past decade, especially after the Brits’ handoff of HK to the PRC. Booth thinks they’re doing just fine. Don’t misconstrue my interest in HK. It’s more than just the Triads, of course. But come’on, what’s more hilarious than living around the corner from the world’s biggest dildo factory?