Tsang Tsou-choi (Chinese: 曾灶財), commonly referred to as the "Emperor of Kowloon" (九龍皇帝) (12 November 1921 – 15 July 2007) was a Hong Kong citizen known for his distinctive calligraphy graffiti.
He travelled to Hong Kong at the age of 16 as a worker, poor and barely literate.
Tsang's family disowned him because they think he is a public nuisance and mentally unbalanced.
In the cultural context of China, writing poems and inscriptions on stones, mountains or other public spaces has been an integral part of the appreciated cultural heritage.¹
His graffiti tells about political messages, heritage and names, they appear on walls, posts and electricity boxes, pillars, pavements, street furniture, building walls all over town.
He also often placed inscriptions in sites where it could function to symbolically contest the power of the state, for most of the time he was working a very late period colonial regime.
Tsang's contestations to governmental authority are manifesting by the function of his art, he also in a sense usurped the very language of authority. His inscriptions invariably asserted that he was the emperor of new China - the two key characters of that claim, ‘guo huang’, usually being executed at a larger scale because of their significance. Dispossessed by his social marginality and relative lack of education of an autonomous language of protest, he responded by mimicking the language of power itself, referring in his inscriptions to his family lineage to bolster his claim as well as to assert a sense of belonging.²
An interest in promoting such a sense of local consciousness had been common amongst Hong Kong artists in the run-up to the 1997 handover but Hong Kong identity was more broadly a matter of concern in the period which followed the return to Chinese sovereignty.
Tsang Tsou-Choi has written an uncountable number of long, calligraphic inscriptions with a brush on the streets of Hong Kong for decades.
"Tsang wrote about his ancestors, a list of the Tsang family beginning with the first generation arriving in what's now Sau Mau Ping, 1700 years ago. Also he wrote about places his family owned. The list often ended with "Emperor of the kingdom of new China Canton and Kowloon Tsang Tsuo Choi."
Although his graffiti was painted over to cover his writings, he often returned back to re-apply his messages on the walls. At the height of his graffiti career, his obsessive marking of territory made his graffiti an ever-present aspect of the streets of Hong Kong. The graffiti has been spotted at many places on the streets of the city.
He appeared in a
commercial for Swipe cleaner, in which he cleans away his permanent ink graffiti, proclaiming the product's effectiveness to Hong Kong consumers.
Tsang was arrested many times for vandalism, but his only known prison time was in the '60s when he smashed a window at a post office with a rock and did 18 months locked away. He walked with crutches for many years after a rubbish container fell on him injuring his legs permantly. As his knees could no longer support him he retired from painting the walls in mid-2003.
In 2004, the shrine of Tsang Tsou-Choi's home caught fire while he was making an offering, so his family, worried about his safety, arranged for him to move into an elderly home. Even as he moved into the care home, his eight bags continued to hang off his crutches, carrying the basic writing tools such as paper, pens, and ink that would allow him to continue his writing.
During his last years, he lived in a retirement home, and no longer wrote on walls. However, his poor health did not entirely halt his calligraphic efforts. He continued his work on paper, household linens, and other mundane items.
"Tsang Tsou-Choi was becoming one of the most established symbols of Hong Kong cultural identity."
Mr Tsang Tsou-Choi, also known as the "Emperor of Kowloon", passed away in Kowloon Hospital on July 15, 2007 at 85 years old.