One Night at the ChungKing Mansion

It’s 5:30 in the am and we’re in the first hour of our 5 hour layover here in Seoul Airport.  I’m probably going to use this time to either try to sleep, or more likely upload pictures from Guang Zhou and Hong Kong – in the meantime here’s a video someone took from the Chungking Mansion where we stayed in HK. Don’t let the way it looks scare you off, if you’re ever in Hong Kong and want a cheap and relatively clean place right in the heart of downtown, this place is your only option. We stayed at the Maple Leaf (12 floor, E block), it was run by a nice guy Mr. James, a soft spoken and informative asian guy from Canada… i think. (hense the maple leaf….) 

I’m exhausted and sick as a dog – so i’m not gonna go into details, instead i’m just gonna copy what other people have said about the place.

Today, the building is strikingly out of place on a street of posh Bally and Versace boutiques; it sits on arguably some of the most valuable real estate in the world. However, with over 900 owners holding shares of the building, the ownership structure is so confused that purchasing and developing the property is virtually impossible.

The ratty, exhaust-colored facade of the building features a thousand air conditioners leaking metallic water, a hundred windows punched seemingly at random through the ferro-concrete and a dozen rickety balconies piled with offal and empty crates. Reminders of past tenants can be made out in fading painted signs: Chak Mai Ivory Factory, Freezinhot Bottle Company and Yum-Yum Filters, among others. Over the years, tenants and owners have laid hundreds of miles of questionable wiring and run a few million gallons of water through improvised PVC and Bamboo piping. The Hong Kong Department of Water and Power has made efforts over the years to regulate the mess, but a quick trip up any of the stairwells reveals tangled wiring and dense shrubs of telephone and DSL line, all mashed into corners and sometimes sparking ominously amid thick, sedimentary layers of trash. Fire is a scourge of the Mansion. The worst fire occurred in 1989, when 11 people died in a blaze on the lower floors.

The police sweep the Mansion from time to time, seeking to flush out those who have overstayed visas, as well as to crack down on drug-dealing. One girl brothels, called yat lou yat fung in Cantonese, are legal in Hong Kong. Besides this legal loophole, the Mansion’s layout makes it difficult for the police to bust hookers or drug dealers. Only two creaking elevators serve each building, which forces police to climb the stairs. As most of the unsavory elements of the building operate out of the higher floors, by the time officers have huffed and puffed their way to the 17th floor, the perpetrators and hustlers, alerted by cell phones and pagers, are long gone down interior stairwells.

Talk to locals and residents and they’ll tell you about the stabbings and heroin trade, the padlocks they pile onto their doors to protect themselves from crime.

So why do thousands of Western tourists, some of whom could afford better lodging, still shack up at the Mansion?

the rest at worldhum

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