This is The Guardian.

The secret message only appeared when the wall was drenched with rain. For weeks I'd been

scouring Hong Kong for these misshapen Chinese characters, but the way they materialized out

of nowhere was a shock. It was an unremarkable yellow-gray stone wall in the middle of central

Hong Kong's political and economic heart. The words were only revealed when the wall had

been soaked. In this case, after a dam war in July 2015, which left the wall darkened

and damp, suddenly it was possible to see spots where the dove-gray paint had flaked off,

revealing traces of Chinese calligraphy. The writing in clumsy off-balance characters

about 20 centimetres high was instantly recognisable, for its lack of grace, elegance or learning.

I can't remember the first time I saw characters like these. They were everywhere when I was growing

up in Hong Kong in the 1970s and 80s. A feature of our city just as much as the bottled green

snub knows Star Fairy and the noisy trams. Their author was a fixture of the landscape as

well, of filthy, toothless, often shirtless rubbish collector with mental health issues.

He called himself the King of Kaolun. Hopping on his crutches with plastic bags swinging

from the handles, his crab-like bow-legged silhouette was so distinctive that if people

saw him in the distance, they would cross the road to avoid him. As he passed, parents

would shield their kids' eyes from him. A mutter, cheesy-ing-ah, crazy. He even became

a playground taunt. You're the King of Kaolun, levelled at the slow kids, the weird ones,

the poor ones, the outcasts. His given name was Zhang Zotuo, and he had crossed the border

to Hong Kong from mainland China at the age of 16. Zhang had since become convinced that

Kaolun Peninsula, the southernmost point of what is now mainland China, had belonged

to his family and had been stolen from them by the British in the 19th century. He later

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