If you think of the of the wickedness as equal parts of squalor, misery and despair, maybe the Walled City of Kowloon is the wickedness around - at least per square foot. One dank alley forks into another, weaving menacing maze of burrows over an area the size of 10 city blocks. Here are ‘homes’ for 25,000 people. 200 shops, 100 factories for everything from noodles to religious firecrackers. Few houses have electricity, fewer still running water. Some are never touched by sunlight. The biggest building is a former Chinese Government office, now an almshouse for old women with incurable illnesses. The courtyard of a former temple-school, once a place of honour for ancestors, is jammed with shacks and overrun with children who don’t go to school. Only a handful of one-room schools and clinics are run in the Walled city, by christian missionaries. None is operated by the government.

Also housed amid this ancient real estate are 60 illegal dentists’ and doctors’ offices, three opium dens, two gambling houses, several roving heroin shops, five mahjong parlours and 100 rooms where a can keng-gai (“have a little conversation”) with a pyjama clad girl.

Vice, like life, is cheap in the Walled City. Keng-gai with a ‘young girl’ costs 80 cents to $1.50; with an ‘old woman’ 40 cents. An opium smoke is 80 cents, a packet of heroin from 8 to 50 cents. Only gambling is sky-limited – $200 and up. These bargains are peddled to Chinese men, who when they work, earn about $2 a day. The silk-thin profit has to come from volume. In its anxious scramble for business, the Walled City never sleeps.

– excerpt from City of Darkness, Greg Girard and Ian Lambot, Watermarks Publications UK LTD The World Wickedest City’, written by Cathie Breslin (page 264) 

如果你視邪惡為骯髒、痛苦和絕望的一部分，那麼九龍城寨可能至少每一平方英尺，就是充滿邪惡的存在。由一個潮濕的小巷岔入另一個，以面積為十個城市街區交織成險惡的地道迷宮區域。這就是 25,000 人所稱之為的「家」。200 家商店以及 100 家工廠，從麵條到炮仗應有盡有。但當中很少房子有電力供應，更少有自來水，有些甚至從來沒有接觸過陽光。城寨裡最大的建築物是一所中國政府的前辦公室，後來成為了患上絕症的老年婦女貧民所。在曾經屬於廟宇的庭院裡，曾經是一片屬於祖先的榮耀之地，後來到處都變成棚屋，到處都擠滿了不上學的孩子。只有小撮基督教傳教士在城寨內經營起單室學校和診所。當中沒有任何一家是由政府經營。

在這個古老的房地產當中，還設有 60 個無牌牙醫及醫生辦公室、三個鴉片窩、兩個賭博房、數個海洛英流動商店、五個麻將館，以及 100 個可與穿著睡衣的女孩「傾偈」(閒聊）的房間。

惡習，就像在城寨的生活一樣，都賣得很便宜。和一個「年輕女孩」「傾偈」的價格為五至十元不等；和「老婦人」則三元左右。鴉片煙為五元，一包海洛英為六毫至四元。只有賭博是由一千五百元的天價起跳。這些便宜貨主要兜售給中國男性，而他們每天的工作收入約為十五元。如此薄利的生意必須以多銷來維持，在這種急切的生意競爭中，城寨從來徹夜不眠。

－節錄自Greg Girard（格雷格‧吉拉德）和 Ian Lambot（林保賢）《黑暗之城》， Watermarks Publications UK LTD 出版，Cathie Breslin 撰寫的《世界最邪惡的城市》（第264頁）

About the artist:

Ian Lambot trained as an architect and worked briefly for the Richard Rogers Partnership before arriving in Hong Kong in 1979, where he lived for the next 18 years.After stints running an architectural model-making studio and working with Foster and Partners - on the early stages of the Hongkong Bank project - he set up Watermark Publications, publishing in the years since numerous books on architecture, engineering and design, including four volumes on the work of Norman Foster and, of course, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City.

He now lives in the UK, where he continues to design and publish books on subjects that interest him. 

關於 Ian Lambot（林保賢）:

Ian Lambot 來自英國，在大學時主修建築，曾在羅傑斯建築事務所（Richard Rogers Partnership）任職，於1979年來到香港後，在此地住了二十年，期間被九龍城寨深深吸引。曾經營建築模型製作工作室，又與福斯特建築事務所（Foster and Partners）合作（匯豐銀行興建項目的早期階段），其後成立 Watermark Publications，多年來出版無數有關建築和工程的書籍，包括四冊關於福斯特（Norman Foster）建築作品的書，還有《黑暗之城：九龍城寨的日與夜》。

他現居英國，並繼續從事設計和出版書籍工作。