Chasing the King of Kowloon

The mood was one of eager anticipation when, four years behind schedule, Hong Kong finally unveiled its multimillion-dollar M+ art museum in November 2021. As the docents swung open the gallery’s entrance, they revealed the very first piece in the exhibition: a pair of wooden doors daubed with misshapen, messy Chinese calligraphy in black ink. The doors had been chosen, the museum’s curator, Tina Pang, says, because they represent Hong Kong’s visual culture. Yet the graffiti on the doors is the controversial work of a man once so far outside the mainstream that he was derided by the establishment as a psychopath. This elevation to the premium spot in Hong Kong’s newest art museum caps the unlikely rise of an improbable artist who spent a lifetime railing against Hong Kong’s overlords, whether they were colonial masters from London or, later, distant rulers in Beijing.

For years, I’d been obsessed with the man who had painted those wooden doors, who had become the unlikeliest of Hong Kong’s local icons. He was a mostly toothless, often shirtless, disabled trash collector with mental-health issues. His given name was Tsang Tsou-choi, but everyone called him the King of Kowloon. Over the years, Tsang had come to believe that the jutting prong of the Kowloon peninsula, adjoining mainland China