Available in French on ACA (Asian Contemporary Art) Project’s website here

Written 10th July 2023, by Amandine Vabre Chau

Looking back on the King of Kowloon 

 A King in the Making

Known as Tsang Tsou-Choi this Hong Kong figure was, and still is, conflicting for many people. Born in 1921, he was a garbage collector turned artist against his will, before becoming a national symbol of resistance. Currently exhibited at the M+ museum in Hong Kong, he earned his title by baptising himself the rightful king of the Hong Kong Kowloon peninsula. Most agreed on him having mental health issues, a few others believed him lucid enough and merely highly inventive.  

The story goes: Tsang was to be monarch of this land as one of his ancestors received it as a gift from a Chinese Emperor. At first referring to the peninsula only, soon the entirety of Hong Kong was supposedly under his rule. No one knows for sure how he came to this idea, as there have been many different reports of its origins. One of these states that he found family documents testifying his ancestral clan’s ownership over the territory, another says it was due to his accident, which rendered him disabled. His family stayed out of the spotlight making it difficult to confirm anything, and officials never recognised his claims. None of this stopped the cultural icon from manifesting his obsession which would make him one of the most expensive Hong Kong artists and the first one to represent the Special Administrative Region* at the Venice Biennale in 2003 before he passed away in 2007. 

Peeling paint reveals Tsang Tsou-Choi (King of Kowloon) intervention at Boundary Street, Hong Kong – © Amandine Vabre Chau

Political context and social background 

Now this might be when the author of an article starts psychoanalysing a person they have never met and pours political judgment into their should-be neutral piece. Unfortunately, neutrality is a privilege I am unable to give you. As an obsessive Hong Kong diasporic writer, I can only testify of the utterly incomprehensible madness my home country has gone through. Which perhaps explains how an incomprehensibly mad hero came along. Hong Kong was passed on from China to Britain and back to China again under a coerced agreement signed by both parties where Hong Kongers were not consulted. Britain, hungry for tea and porcelain, required China to cede part of its territory for trade unless they were to face invasion. When the metropolis was returned to China in 1997, as the former agreement stated, the ruling powers agreed on the “One Country, Two System” principle. A constitutional principle declaring that Hong Kong was to remain unchanged for 50 years, continuing with its own laws and system developed under the British empire, until 2047 when it will be returned to China in full. This effectively activated a countdown until the end of this purgatory. A feeling of discomfort and dread was growing, a rising sense of a stateless or stolen identity, a limbo city-country-colony. To simplify the divide in 1997: on one hand some had colonial nostalgia for a supposed better ruler who gave capitalistic value to the territory and arguably improved the local lifestyle; on the other were patriots who remembered very clearly the century long humiliation China endured at the hands of European colonisers and were therefore grateful to return to the motherland. Then, there were those who grew up in this period, when Hong Kong developed its own culture and traditions. Some refused the either/or logic, others sounded alarm bells when observing the rapidly changing landscape in China with its violent upheavals, some demanded British citizenship, a few knowing Britain would never let this happen, others protected their interests, some fled, some fought for their growing local identity. I can’t give you a comprehensive picture of everyone during that time, I can only stress how important it is to not yield to binaries, especially as these are still contested today.  

There had been Hong Konger advisers during British rule who truly tried their best for the common good of the people. They participated in the peripheral government logistics, without being allowed an official status, and were called the “Unofficials”. The title demonstrating, to put it mildly, the lack of consideration the colonial government allocated to these professionals. However, they were not without power and governors usually did not act against their recommendations. All in all, I am mentioning this so we do not get an image of a powerless people. People are never powerless, and always find a way to slip through the cracks of a supposedly watertight system.  

With this context, I hope the significance of Tsang Tsou-Choi can appear clearer. He physically reclaimed the properties of the people, he was an original occupier before social unrest in Hong Kong brought us the Umbrella Movement**. He managed to slip through the cracks and widen the fracture, bringing light to the failures of our government, even if unconsciously. Developing our conception of art, engaging in public spaces, broadening our definition of resistance with an implausible, almost juvenile, sense of insubordination. As property developers swept through the city skyrocketing prices, he was a permanent anchor, a continued demonstration of the need to repossess. As land farmers were fewer and fewer due to evictions for large-scale housing projects, he was a relentless cultivator of our common territory. Like a farmer would plant a seed and nurture their soil, the King embedded his ink into our cityscape, fostering his kingdom.  

Remaining traces of Tsang Tsou-Choi’s (King of Kowloon) intervention on Queen’s Road Central, Central, Hong Kong – © Amandine Vabre Chau

Artistic practice, its symbolic and its becoming 

Our conception of art seems to be reevaluated every now and then, as it should. If our interpretation of this practice was to remain unchanged, the art world would never be more than what it is currently. This would lead to great loss, it would be a constraining, restrictive and regressive approach to a fundamentally human activity. As with all human practices, it is bound to change, move and adapt. This is why Tsang’s calligraphy came to be an important part of Hong Kong visual culture. It emerged at a specific time, with a specific approach and method responsive to his environment. His work was visually bold, incorrect by traditional calligraphy standards, imprecise in its execution; yet his squared characters stacked on top of each other invaded every surface with an urge, an almost manic desperation, a need to occupy every blank space available. He wasn’t senseless, by all means, he knew calligraphy was an Emperor’s art and took it to heart to continue this tradition, but only by making it his own. The King was careful to place his characters in a grid-like structure to read from top to bottom, right to left, meaning the correct traditional Chinese way. He was much less disorganised than we might think. He calculated the size of his words, creating a pattern to fit within the frame of his choice. He would build new structures within the one already forming before his eyes, suddenly enlarging a character to take up the space of 5 and forming a block within a block, drawing your attention to it. This block, almost always read “King”. Placing his signature front and center, you were to know who passed by and who was speaking. Under his name would often be those of his family, his wife and children. Occasionally his words would squeeze between themselves, trying to make way for one another, similar to a living wave crashing into a different one. A self-pollination multiplying at certain places, where his words seemed to invade others, culminating in a battle for visual domination. The audience reading his decrees was familiar with its content, mostly constant, making it a point to read the entire piece and if needed, decipher it when too enmeshed within itself.  

This decoding was still relevant after his work was erased, the public being able to notice ink residuals. They would stop by an old and covered painting to try and read its remaining traces. Unfortunately, out of the 55 845 works, only three survived in public spaces. A few have been transported to museums along with some objects he painted on after people asked him to. Indeed, in his final years more and more individuals got interested in his work and as pillars and walls are difficultly removed to sell on the market, some gave him bottles, tee-shirts, and other items to write on. Fashion designers, art directors, interior decorators and curators either directly met with him or got inspiration from him. His calligraphy was soon found on various commodities, he was featured in movies and even appeared on a Swipe Clean commercial (an ingenious move on the company’s part to advertise their cleaning product with an ink painter). Rightfully so, the public expressed ethical concerns about stringing along a person with mental health issues in an unscrupulous commercial ecosystem to merchandise his art. We could also question the relevance of having him write on these objects when his purpose was to demonstrate his dominion over stolen land with massive works in public spaces. You were supposed to see them in your everyday life as the evidence of his loss. More significantly, was the fact that Tsang never considered himself an artist. He had clarified his stance on numerous occasions, maintaining his status as a wronged King. Perhaps then, even this article is out of place. After all, would it ever be right to turn a living, breathing, person into a symbol they have never claimed? Is turning them into a story dehumanising them and watering down their complex existence?  Somehow, he got thrown into the spotlight and we were overjoyed at the sight of an unusual phenomenon.   

Renowned cultural critic Ackbar Abbas explained that Hong Kong is entrenched in “a culture of disappearance whose appearance is posited on the immanence of its disappearance”. In a city hampered by unaffordable housing, societal pressure, political tension, a dysfunctional health system, pollution and lack of space; Tsang-Tsou Choi spoke to people by being an ordinary man who achieved the extraordinary. With all his flaws and perplexity, against all odds and even against his will, he offered a glimpse of what irrationality in an over-analytical world could do. He was proof of how an off-axis path of resilience could lead to countless new possibilities. He resisted erasure time and again, defying disappearance for decades while we were trapped in a never-ending cycle of dissolution. Hong Kongers continually fought for their emergence and it did not matter if he, or his legacy, was seen as laughable or strange. It mattered that he had the courage of a few and radiated it every day by inscribing his presence onto the bones of the city by saying: I am here, and I am not going anywhere, no matter how many times you try to make me vanish. 

*Hong Kong was a British Colony from 1841 to 1997, when it returned to China. The One Country Two System principle was put in place declaring Hong Kong a Special Administrative Region with its own laws. This gave the territory a semi-independent status that was to be maintained for 50 years, until 2047. Hong Kong will then be fully absorbed into mainland China.

**The umbrella movement was a 2014 political movement in Hong Kong that culminated in a 79 days occupation of the city to demand true universal suffrage.

Written 10th July 2023, by Amandine Vabre Chau