This is The Guardian.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hi, my name's Louisa Lim. I'm the author of The King of Kowloon, my search for the cult

graffiti prophet of Hong Kong. It was published in 2022. So it was all the way back in 2011. I went to

this art exhibition in Hong Kong and it was an art exhibition of this quite mysterious artist, this guy called Tsangzhou Choi, who people also called the King of Kowloon.

And he used to paint all this mysterious graffiti that appeared all over the city and then kind of disappeared and then appeared again.

And he was kind of like a guerrilla, rogue graffiti

artist, and no one knew anything about him. And when I'd been a kid growing up in Hong Kong,

I'd seen his graffiti everywhere, and it had really made an impression on me. That was the moment

that I thought, what's happened to this guy and who was this guy anyway?

And so I started researching his story.

Just before the story came out, there was this new piece of graffiti that was done by the King of Kowloon,

and it was discovered under a railway bridge in Moncoc, so on Kowloon's side.

Anyway, it was really interesting that when this work appeared back in 2022, actually the authorities behaved a bit differently and they didn't sort of paint over it or wash over it.

In fact, they actually got experts to clean it and restore it. They dated it back to 1996-97,

and they restored it and they covered it with varnish so people could see it, and then they put a little

plaque up beside it. They really introduced the King of Kowloon to people who didn't know who he was.

So I was actually really surprised and heartened by this that, you know,

maybe now the authorities are actually beginning to think about his legacy and actually protect

his work. But then on the minus side, one thing that's happened since the story came out is

that there's been this real tightening on freedom of expression.

So in 2024, there was some more national security legislation that was enacted in Hong Kong.

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