90 Guesthouses
380 businesses: food stands, sellers of mobile phones, watches, electronic items, clothing
4,000 people on any given night stay in the building
100 square meters, 17 stories
10,000 people/existence day pass through the Chungking Mansions from around 124 countries
Built in 1961 - - intended for thw well-off by many accounts
1988 Danish tourist died in a fire
1993: building lost power for 10 days
Africans make for over half of those staying
Sushila Pandey, a 37 year old tourist was killed in the building by her Sri Lankan partner Attanayake Wasala Dangamuwa
1995: 1,750 people were questioned... 45 men and seven women were arrested on suspicion of offences including failing to produce proof of identity, overstaying, using forged travel documents, possessing equipment for forging documents, and possessing dangerous drugs
1996: operation sahara -- 52 men and women were arrested for violating immigration regulations
20-30 percent of all phones in sub-saharan Africa are traded/purchased in the Chungking mansions
Reasons for its in the expensive Hong Kong:
1. Relatively relaxed visa laws (of Hong Kong)
2. Chungking Mansions' rock bottom prices
3. 920 owners -- unified ownership remarkably weak: they can do as he/she pleases -- property developers have not been able to buy the building and replace it with an expensive structure
4. China's emergence as the world manufacturing center --> low-end entrepreneurs flock
People living in the mansions:
1. Traders
2. Owners/managers and their employees
3. Asylum Seekers (around 2,500)
4. Tourists
*80 sex workers (mostly Chinese and Indian -- some from Nepal, Indonesia, Mongolia, Kenya)
*40 Heroin addicts and petty drug dealers
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