Grocery-store owner Chan Pak, 60, in his tiny shop on Lung Chun Back Road. He had a particular passion for cats and owned seven when this picture was taken
This hairdresser puts curlers in a customer’s hair at a salon in the city. Many people continued to live their lives normally despite drug and crime problems. From the end of the work in the 1970’s up to 1983 3,500 police raids were carried out, resulting in 2,500 arrests and 4,000 pounds (1800 kilograms) in seized drugs, a lot of that being opium and heroin.
A child with a grazed knee sits on a counter top in a tiny shop which sells essentials like toilet paper and canned foods. Cigarettes are also on display in a cabinet.
The area was made up of 300 interconnected high-rise buildings, built without the contributions of a single architect and ungoverned by Hong Kong’s health and safety regulations.
Thousands of people went about their lives daily with many making do with what space they had to grow plants or hand washing on balconies above the busy shops and streets below.
A rooftop view of the city at night which shows just a few of the thousands of TV aerials which sit on the buildings.
Over time, both the British and the Chinese governments found the massive, anarchic city to be increasingly intolerable – despite the low reported crime rate in later years.
Workers – not restricted by health and safety regulations – prepare their fish for sale and, right, a wall in a home adorned with clocks and pictures of relatives.
Daylight barely penetrates the rubbish-strewn grille over the city’s Tin Hau Temple which was built in 1951 on an alley off Lo Yan Street.
The government spent around 2.7 billion Hong Kong dollars in compensation to the estimated 33,000 families and businesses. Some were not satisfied and tried to stop the evacuations.
