Over the years Chungking Mansions has been all things to those who crossed its threshold. A gangland slum, a high-end palace, a curry mecca. Pot of gold however, may not be its most recognised identity.

The 55-year-old structure, with its dozens of businesses and heaving eateries, has long been a meeting place for the wealthy, the needy and everyone in between. It has given asylum seekers, Chinese immigrants, westerners and even the unaccustomed Hongkonger their first taste of the grit of this vibrant city.

But unfortunately for this place, which is steeped in nostalgia and cultural significance, its days are numbered.

Management says that it may only take another economic downturn similar to that of the late 1990s to create conditions that favour developers. And while goodwill and good balance sheets keep this place running, it is simply rare for a building to last so long especially with the pressures of time and the moist sea air weighing heavily on its foundations.

Architect and Hong Kong University professor Dr Lee Ho-yin says reinforced concrete buildings over 50 years old can suffer from water damage that can weaken and corrode the steel and cause cracking in the concrete.

At Chungking Mansions, work has been done to repair its cracking concrete in order to extend the building’s lifespan.

Changing faces: Chungking Mansions has had recent work to revive its creaking image. Photo: SCMP Pictures

“It was the main target of the work, to maintain it and make it last for longer,” says Dennis Cheung Ka-yuen, a representative of the building management.

But the repairs are far from being the panacea that Chungking Mansions needs.

“The building is 55 years old now, I think after ten years the building may be torn down because of structural problems,” says Cheung, adding that the building’s maze-like layout is also contributing to its congestion and, inevitably, its destruction.

“It’s a tall building, it consists of 17 floors. Just by common sense it cannot last for too long, it cannot last for hundreds of years.”

The obvious answer may seem to be to move on, but countering pressures like expanding maintenance costs are restrictive building rules and the common sense equation that it’s still a place where businesses operate profitably.

Money pot

According to management, some 10,000 people funnel into Chungking’s doors and through its rabbit warren of crowded corridors every day, providing streams of cash for businesses catering to human necessities inside. And there is also the well known international trade in all kinds of goods that is negotiated in the shops.

The building itself is worth billions of dollars, estimated by prior property sales data, and the trade of the businesses, somewhere in the millions.

A conservative estimate of the monetary value of Chungking Mansions is about HK$6.3 billion, but insiders in the property development game say it’s probably worth more.

Just one prominent store on the first floor occupied by Sasa was sold for HK$150 million in 2004, according to lands registry documents, and continues to draw $1.15 million a month in rent for its owners – or $41.4 million over its three year tenancy agreement.

Staying makes sense

Considering the entire ecosystem of Chungking Mansions, it still proves to be a tidy earner for landlords and businesses operating there. Rents at Chungking Mansions are competitive, with some apartments around $30 a square foot in the prime position at the southern end of Nathan Road – cheap but on the high side for such an old building perhaps reflecting its location rather than its condition.

Flats there are tightly held, transaction histories published by Midland Property and Spacious.hk show three sales in 2016 and another eight since 2006, with their prices comparable to new apartments in Hong Kong.

Tidy profits have created goodwill among most owners, but some outliers campaign for a sell-out.

“Actually most of the owners are willing to keep it running, because they are earning profits from the building,” Cheung says.

“But for the other side, it’s not a big group, they might own the unit or a shop but they can’t rent it out, they might come to the office and reflect to us their wish to sell it to a big developer.”

To gauge the value of Chungking Mansions, look no further than the 2009 sale of the Hyatt Regency, which used to sit just across Nathan Road before it was transformed into the glass-and-steel iSquare shopping centre.

The sale and construction price for that site, with a floor area of 600,000 square feet, was HK$1.3 billion – about a fifth of Chungking Mansions’ estimated worth.

Home and hearth for a growing city

Designed in the late 1950s, Chungking Mansions replaced the Chungking Arcade, a street-level market selling electronics and other goods, according to its official history.

It was the first of its kind in Kowloon, towering 17 storeys above the ‘60s landscape.

Bulky monolithic buildings like Chungking Mansions are part of a type called “composite buildings”, which in the post-war decades almost completely replaced the four-storey tong laus which were a hallmark of colonial Hong Kong up to that point, as Dr Lee explained in a recent public lecture at Hong Kong University.

But the tong laus couldn’t house enough people during the rapid post-war migration from mainland China. Between 1947 and 1963 Hong Kong’s population nearly doubled to more than 3.4 million people.

At the time, people were streaming over the border from the mainland and this new building type which was springing up like weeds across the colony had to take up the demand for beds.

Dr Lee explained in his lecture that one of the new features of composite buildings was firstly their height, towering sometimes ten storeys above the old tong laus, and the ownership structure.

Whereas tong lau buildings usually had one or two owners, new composite buildings were designed to be mixed use, incorporating residential flats and businesses throughout the building.

Each apartment was generally sold to an individual.

The building suffered damaging fires even in the first five years of its life. Despite affecting thousands of residents at a time, they continued to live and work there. Photo: SCMP

Only now, as these buildings age, does the fragmented ownership of these buildings become tricky.

With about 650 owners of 920 titles over apartments and shops, a developer would need to secure 80 per cent or 736 titles to ensure redevelopment of Chungking Mansions under rules introduced in 2010 affecting compulsory acquisition of buildings more than 50 years old.

“Many developers are targeting this site, this location,” Cheung says. “So if the operation and the economy goes down the developers may be able to purchase all the ownership and tear down the building and build a new one for profit.”

“It depends on whether it’s profitable, and it depends on the safety of the building.”

“In the late ‘90s when the economy was its worst and building condition was [also at its] worst, developers began approaching owners.”

“It is quite hard now because the ownership is too separate,” he says.

Holding all the cards

The redevelopment of the Chungking Mansions site is almost a certainty. The only questions left to answer are who, when and how?

But like a stubborn horse, not willing to budge, Chungking seems to have a few tricks up its sleeve to keep it from the wrecking ball.

With an estimated 41,000 composite buildings in Hong Kong to reach 60-years old in the coming years, Chungking Mansions is an expensive prospect in a long list of cheaper options elsewhere.

According to Dr Lee, it could take years before the building’s fate is known.

“A building like Chungking Mansions may take more than 10 years for a developer to acquire sufficient properties for redevelopment, which is the main reason why it has survived,” he says.

Meanwhile, building limitations in place in Kowloon’s south cast even more doubt over the possibilities for future redevelopment.

Building regulations have changed as population pressures of the post-war period have subsided. Hong Kong’s population may be growing at a slower rate than before, but it is still imperative that more people be housed.

A hypothetical new building at the site would need to limit its gross floor area to less than what is currently there, according to an insider who said the main issue that could make it necessary to rebuild at the site would be maintenance costs owing to its age, rather than profit. Developers might then be forced to consider other, less popular and profitable buildings to commit to the wrecking ball.

Nothing lasts forever

Bricks and mortar may be replaced, as they often are in Hong Kong, but the talk of the loss of a world famous icon from the Tsim Sha Tsui scene sparks nostalgia in many. The thought that this cultural hub that has lived nine lives could be replaced with a sparkling mall full of designer brands like much of the rest of Tsim Sha Tsui in the next ten years could fill the same people with dread. But with so many Hong Kong buildings sagging into ruin after half a century of service the Mansions are defended from developers by its fruitful businesses and its popularity.

To countless people it has been the variable dose of comfort they needed as they arrived in Hong Kong, to others it was their road to riches, or a stop along the way. Maybe the building can’t last forever, but as articles in this project explain, Chungking Mansions has already developed an immortal cultural impression.

Many business people have struck gold in Chungking Mansions. Sam Lau is one of them.

Lau, 69, runs a guesthouse in the iconic building in TST and has become a millionaire for his efforts.

But while he has earned the title of successful businessman, it is the title of Wing Chun master that he values most.

Lau spent years learning and teaching alongside one of the discipline’s best, but strayed from its path to seek gold in Chungking Mansions. These days, Lau is focused on promoting Wing Chun – known for its close-range, explosive strikes – as he seeks to have it included as an Olympic sport.

“Korea’s taekwondo and Japan’s judo have already made their appearances in (sic) Olympics for several decades, so why can’t our homegrown kung-fu do the same?” he says.

Lau’s lifelong association with Wing Chun started in the early 1960s, when the 16-year-old Hong Kong boy crossed paths with Chinese martial arts master Yip Man in a Mong Kok barber shop.

“The barber told me that the bald man sitting next to me was a martial arts master, so I asked him whether he would like to teach me,” Lau says. “He then introduced me to one of his disciples.”

Born and raised in Nanhai, Guangdong, Yip migrated to the former British colony after the Communist takeover of 1949 and devoted his life to the popularisation of Wing Chun (Yip would also teach kung-fu legend Bruce Lee).

During the first few months of his Wing Chun enlightenment, Lau says he would deliberately pick fights with “gangster boys” around Kowloon Tong as a way to self-test his learning.

“I was cruel at the time,” Lau remembers.

Yip took Lau under his wing. He took him on as a formal disciple taking him to martial arts courses as a teaching assistant in the late ‘60s and ’70s. Together they founded the Yip Man Martial Arts Athletic Association.

But unlike some of Yip’s other disciples who spent most of their life involved with martial arts, Lau left behind his 10 years of teaching to become a businessman. In 1977 he opened a guesthouse in Chungking Mansions, taking on the jobs of housekeeper, accountant, handyman and security guard.

"I took that decision to earn a living,” Lau recalls. “It was tough at the beginning, but I started making a profit within a few months."

Lau, who is president of the Hong Kong Guesthouse Association, says in the 1980s, Chungking Mansions was attracting global backpackers, with many guests coming from Europe, Japan and the US.

Fast-forward 20 years and Lau had become something of a tycoon in Chungking Mansions with more than 10 guesthouses to his name. He sold a majority of them a few years ago, a decision he now regrets.

“Chungking Mansions has become much better managed in recent years, which was not what I expected,” he says. But despite being a millionaire, Lau says he prefers to be seen as a Wing Chun master.

As for the future, Lau says he plans to turn his own villa into a Wing Chun temple, where people can practice his martial art and tourists can visit.

“Money is not that important to me at my age.

“I just want to do something meaningful, even something that will not bring any economic benefits. My top priority is to promote Wing Chun, just as my mentor Yip Man did when I was young.”

Now the master and the mentor to some 3000 students, Lau says that foreigners, not Chinese, have proven themselves to be the most passionate and hardworking in the martial arts studio.

“Wing Chun may be a household name among Chinese, but it is not very widely practiced in China, perhaps even less popular than ... taekwondo.”

Taekwondo, an ancient Korean martial art, which translates to “the way of the foot and fist”, became an official Olympic medal sport in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Japan’s judo was first included in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

“It is a shame.” Lau says about the absence of Chinese martial arts from the Olympics.

“There is no unification of various Chinese martial arts styles. We also need more support from the government, not just various societies, to boost its popularity nationwide.”