The site was a military outpost as far back as the Song dynasty, set up to manage the salt trade, and in 1847 it was made a walled coastal fort to reinforce Chinese authority after Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain. When the 1898 Convention leased the New Territories to Britain for 99 years, the walled city — about 700 people at the time — was left out of the lease, and China kept the right to station officials there as long as they did not interfere with the defence of British Hong Kong. British forces attacked it on 14 April 1899 and found only the mandarin and 150 residents. The walls themselves came down in 1943, during the Japanese occupation.
After the Second World War, refugees from the Chinese Civil War moved in — 2,000 squatters by 1947 — and with almost no enforcement from either government it became a haven for crime and drugs; it took a 1959 murder trial to settle that Hong Kong had jurisdiction there at all. From the 1950s to the 1970s it was effectively run by triads, a place of prostitution, gambling and drug trafficking, until a series of major police raids in the 1970s broke their hold. Through the 1960s and 1970s the low-rise town built upward without architects or engineers, and by 1987 an estimated 33,000 people lived inside its 2.6 hectares, one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Most of them lived peacefully, running small businesses and factories, despite poor sanitation and almost no daylight in the lower levels.
The British and Chinese governments announced on 14 January 1987 that it would be torn down. Eviction, with HK$2.7 billion in compensation, was complete in 1992; demolition began on 23 March 1993 and ended in April 1994, and Kowloon Walled City Park, built on the site, was opened by Governor Chris Patten on 22 December 1995. By then the city had passed into fiction — William Gibson's Bridge trilogy, Shenmue II, Call of Duty: Black Ops in 2010, Stray in 2022, and Shadowrun: Hong Kong, which rebuilds it in 2056 — and Anavrin names Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and Cyberpunk 2077 as the company its kit keeps.
Anavrin says it traced old photographs and memories to ask one question: what would the city look like in 2049? Its alley mixes the real place with the imagined one — unlicensed dentists, Earth God shrines tucked into corners, a glowing bubble-tea stand, exposed drainage pipes and dark puddles, steam, and signs in several languages, among them a signboard that cycles through red, green and blue. The kit, ABN03, went on pre-order in July 2025 to ship from 15 August. It is 195 pre-cut, pre-coloured wooden pieces with LED strings, an English guide and front and top dust covers, building to 9.1 × 4.7 × 8.4 in, with twelve light sources in six colours, one of them the flashing signboard. At launch it ran on two AAA batteries (not included) and was rated for ages 14 and up and about four to six hours; glue, scissors and tweezers were left out for shipping. Anavrin's current page offers USB-C power with the plug included.