“Hello, sir, would you like to take the cheapest room in Hong Kong?”, “Best Indian curry”, “Armani watch, very cheap madam” are probably the most common words one can hear just standing on the entrance of this infamous building on Nathan road.

Having the reputation of being the most notorious place in Hong Kong, Chungking Mansions has been in the news from times immemorial. Murders, disputes, rapes and drugs are the things that locals usually associate with the building. It is absolutely normal if one hears strict warnings to not go there alone especially during late night hours.

But, for the people working inside the building for years, it is just like any other workplace and has much more to offer than just cheap accommodations, delicious curries and desserts from India, Pakistan, Malaysia or Nepal.

For Khalid Khan, a local businessman selling mobile phones on the first floor of the building for over eight years, “The place is a perfect blend of cultures” and it is “unfortunate that the diversity of the building is mostly the reason for the negative publicity.”

“Crime happens in many other places in Hong Kong such as Jordon, Mong Kok and Aberdeen but this particular building is always highlighted in the news,” Khan says adding that it is hurtful for those who are working hard honestly.

The 17-storey building offering cheap accommodation, small eateries, clothing shops, mobile phone shops, trading firms, retail stores, and tailors stands as a landmark of multi-ethnic presence with people of different countries working together.

Wayne Tsse, a 23-year-old resident of Hong Kong, says, “how the local receive the Chungking Mansions has to do with both racial discrimination and how the media has hyped up the reputation of the building”.

“Although Hong Kong is a very cosmopolitan city, locals tend to be a little closed minded sometimes, especially when the Chinese mentality comes to interfere with how we treat people we perceive as the other.”

Tsse, however, feels that Chungking Mansions is quite a unique place with a colourful mix of people.

As with media and other popular sources of depiction, Tsse says, “This image of how the Chungking Mansions is dangerous has been systematically built up through the amount of negative media coverage we have and the movie which has depicted it as a place of vice.”

In terms of other places in Hong Kong that are similar to Chungking Mansions with respect to crime, there are plenty, he says adding, “Jordon is also a place where crime happens at high density but those places are not treated with same negativity as the Chungking Mansions.”

Although those places might be worse, they are not highlighted because those places are generally seen as a spread of geography and not as a single entity where all these attitudes and tendencies are contained, Tsse adds.

The residents of Chungking Mansions are economically blocked from the rest of the city and often racially discriminated, according to Gordon Mathews’ book “Ghetto at the Center of the World” which throws light on the lives of the people who living or working in the building.

“No matter what people say, a visit to Hong Kong is incomplete without eating the curries at Chungking Mansions,” says Natalie Wu, a backpacker from France who loves to eat at the Indian restaurants in the building.

Though a Google search is bound to make one think about crime and safety of this place in Hong Kong, it is worthwhile to visit and experience the culture – a mini version of globalisation in true form – in Asia’s world city.