Kowloon City

Old apartments

Thumbnail: Alleyway
Thumbnail: Sundries
Thumbnail: Candy stand
Thumbnail: Crossing street
Thumbnail: Fresh seafood
Thumbnail: Fruit stand
Thumbnail: Fruit stand
Thumbnail: Old buildings
Thumbnail: Jewellery store
Thumbnail: Jewellery store
Thumbnail: Magazine stand
Thumbnail: Munchies stand
Thumbnail: Old apartments
Thumbnail: One way street
Thumbnail: Street corner
Thumbnail: Subway route
Thumbnail: Alleyway
Thumbnail: Sundries shop
Thumbnail: Traffic
Thumbnail: Waiting at light
 

My grand­ma’s apart­ment is in Kowloon City, a very old area of Kowloon, char­ac­ter­ized by dirty build­ings and slum­my areas. There’s so much char­ac­ter here. It seems like every shop has a sto­ry, and every street a his­to­ry. My dad told me that since it’s so hard to find park­ing, some restau­rants have a valet park your car for you if you go in.

Since it’s a long-estab­lished area, there’s pret­ty much every­thing you need with­in a cou­ple blocks, or a few min­utes walk. This includes:

  • fruit stands
  • car deal­er­ship
  • restau­rants of many eth­nic­i­ties
  • Chinese med­i­cine shops
  • snack and pas­try shops
  • a toy shop
  • a mod­ern shop­ping mall
  • butch­ers
  • a famous park
  • a shop­ping mall
  • elec­tron­ics and appli­ance stores
  • mag­a­zine stands
  • gro­cery stores
  • den­tist
  • scrap met­al stores
  • cof­fin shop
  • tire shop

One of Hong Kong’s famous real estate agents said that liv­ing in such high den­si­ty is a habit, and that Hong Kongers could expand out­ward (instead of upward) if they want­ed to. I can under­stand why this is true, because every­thing is so close and con­ve­nient. When you live in the mid­dle of all this, you real­ly feel like you’re part of the city’s pulse.

5 comments

    • Yeah, Singaporeans and Malaysians call Hong Kongers Hongkies. I’m not sure if it’s sup­posed to be deroga­to­ry or out of affec­tion. Hong Kong and Singapore have so much in com­mon.

      • That’s fun­ny because a pejo­ra­tive term for white peo­ple is “honkies”, which sounds exact­ly the same.

  1. A cof­fin shop!?!. I would have liked to see how dif­fer­ent THAT would be there.

    • The coffins were a soft yel­low, with accents of oth­er bright colours. It was def­i­nite­ly dif­fer­ent.

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