i saw William Gibson at a reading in Seattle a few years ago and (i think) he was talking a little about how the bridge in virtual light was influenced by something in Hong Kong he learned about. There were these few square blocks in Hong Kong that for some reason had been left to fend for themselves by the British. So for this small area there was no outside support and no law, the British would only enter it with good reason and lots of soldiers. The buildings had been patched together in a makeshift way, jury rigged exposed plumbing made out of clear plastic pipes, you can imagine. He mentioned there had been a book published of photos from inside this area and a video game had been made using photos from there as well, and some how he got cheated out of some royalties or something. The memory is kind of hazy. Anyone know anything about this, what the place was called, the name of the book or video game, or any other information or websites about it? thanks.

there was the Kowloon Walled City .
The photo book was Kau Lung Shing Chai by
Ryuji Miyamoto from Atelier Peyotol . Tokyo 1988

... I had not realized that the "Walled City" had actually existed ...

Kowloon Walled City

When I saw those pictures, I instantly thought of Shenmue 2 I haven't played it, but I remember seeing screenshots of the game with run down buildings like that.

^^ Funny you should mention Shenmue II.

While I was exploring Kowloon in the latter part of the game I often thought about the bridge in Virtual Light. The makeshift nature of the buildings and the way they're all interconnected from the inside create two separate cities. One on the outside of the building walls an an entirely different one on the inside.



As an aside, it's an excellent game. I highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys adventure titles with good story.

**EDIT: Here's a good fan site for anyone interested in the game.

martin-- Your URL got mangled somehow. This one works. Excellent site. Thanks for the link.

[This message was edited by ZYirAH on January 22, 2003 at 08:43 AM.]

Okay, I'm working on things I vaguely remember reading, so if someone has better source info, please speak up.

Yes, Gibson was influenced by the Kowloon Walled City, but the product was not the bridge directly. It was the Walled City virtual environment in (Idoru? i think), the one that existed on all those scattered servers so no one could close the whole thing down. Those are the memories I have.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Shadoth:
Okay, I'm working on things I vaguely remember reading, so if someone has better source info, please speak up.

Yes, Gibson was influenced by the Kowloon Walled City, but the product was not the bridge directly. It was the Walled City virtual environment in (Idoru? i think), the one that existed on all those scattered servers so no one could close the whole thing down. Those are the memories I have.

---

Ok, I am hazy on this too. I will grab my Idoru book tommorow for reference, but I thought the Virtual Walled city existed in the dark space of the network. By dark space, I mean unused portions..sort of like how spammers spoof unused IP blocks. This is at least how i remember it...I will check to see how my memory has held up tommorow

Wow

What a shame it was demolished..

There's also a site here http://www.flex.co.jp/kowloon/home_e.html

Which has a great exploration story on there (if you can get past the mangled english )

Check it out

p.s If anyone knows some other sites (preferrably with pictures) please share with us.

www.syberpunk.com
webmaster@syberpunk.com

The 'Bridge' and the Walled City connection
got a bit blurred.
The Walled city construct / Hak Nam /
city of darkness ,
based somewhat on the formerly real one from Kowloon is what appears in Idoru .
William conflated 2 unusual man made environments (Walled City & Tokyo Bay's islands) into one supranatural locale .

* the HK's Walled city makes an appearance in one of those early J Claude Van Damme pics ,
"BloodSport" (or something)

Walled City was an odd place,
we went there by taxi in 1987 .
You wouldn't want to go the dank dentists there.
The Chinese Gov wanted it gone by HK's handover,
and so ...

ok, I definitely can't get past the english on that site.

I did some looking around and all I could find was some touristy sounding stuff. From the little snippets I could gather, the walled city was pretty much fully functional, just not all that great looking.

pardon the pun, but how could something built on spit and gum be fully functional? If they had the resources for plumbing and electricity how come they lacked aesthetic resources?

I definitely need some more info..I am feeling more then clueless

To Tinesthai
it's an elusive place , memory now.
But it WAS an existing ,
functioning clump of buildings of squatters,
low level criminals, 600 workshops,
around 100 gray dentists and 50 clinics ,
semiself contained .
It grew dense and concentrated behind the walls that closed around it.
In 1943, when the Japanese army demo'ed the walls for use as landfill for the Kai Tak airport close by, what was left was the impacked, ingrown structures.
Kai Tak is old now too,
replaced by the airport on man made island .
(hope there's never a bad earthquake)

But W C Kowloon was never a part of the
'British' HK.
It was always under C'hing authority.
In 1949, 2,000 refugess fleeing mainland occupied Kowloon City.
As the price of homes in HK skyrocketed,
precarious dwellings were built one after another into the thing with TV antennas spiking it's roof that you see in the photos & pictures above in this thread.

re: That Japanese site's
'almost Engrish' is not too easy on the brain,
but it's an interesting link-
those guys did seem to go there ,
albeit in Walled City's final dessicated
days & nights.

There is not a huge volume of info ,
but it did exist .
On that site,
they write about trying to rebuild it.

The Book I have that I mention above in thread,
is probably not so easy to get by now,
but it has page after page of great B&W photos of the place .

("Kau Lung shing Chai".Ryuji Miyamoto.
Peyotol Pub.Tokyo - not even sure the Pub.exists anymore)

There's a park there now

Cheers all
Stay warm

As far as the videogame connected with the walled city, I'm fairly certain it was 'Kowloon's Gate' by Sony of Japan, which was a Playstation game with major production values for the time (1997, I think). I remember before it was released Sony were showing it off a lot. I could probably find some screens of it if I tried, but it ended up never being released outside of Japan, which is a shame since it looked very promising.

Yes, although the Kowloon City is only found in picture books these days, sometimes things like this do happen.

When I was in Japan, I managed to catch a segment on one of their perpetual magazine-format shows which discussed a large apartment building (20, 30 floors or so) in Tokyo that was abandoned because noone could work out who really owns it. It was built just before the bubble burst and the company that owned it promptly went bankrupt and the building went into receivership - before it was opened to tenants.

I think about a couple of years later, people just started moving into the building, there isn't any electricity in it, or running water or any utilities.

The segment focused on a person who lived on the eighth floor or so who had made stormwater collection tanks and contracted for a sewerage truck to take his waste away every other week or so.

It's something bizarre I suppose but I guess these little oddities of modern life happen every now and again. I was going to try and track this building down before I left Tokyo but time caught up with me.

Great story ...
will ck with friends about exactly which bldg. it is /was
Let's go ck it out.
Share a sunset with the Karasu