September 27, 2011
Today there was no fixed agenda, so I decided to explore a part of Kowloon I hadn't been to before. Still dealing with jet lag, and 90 degree weather with nearly 100% humidity, I went to an area called the Wong Tai Sin district. I visited the Hau Wong Temple, built during the Qing dynasty in 1730. One legend regarding its construction says that it commemorates a Chinese general who helped the last Song emperor escape the invading forces of Kowloon, while another states that it is dedicated to a local citizen who cured the Song emperor of a serious illness. I climbed the temple steps and the air got even hotter due to the burning incense sticks. However, I was rewarded with a view of the beautiful glazed tiles in the top photo. Hmm...they looked familiar...where had I seen them before? I suddenly remembered--it was in Arizona, at Frank Lloyd Wright's studio home, Taliesin West. He took broken pieces of the same types of ceramics and put them into various walls around the property (as shown in the middle photo, which you know is Arizona because of the cactus on the right). The bottom photo shows the guest book from the Jade Room at Gump's I wrote about last week. My fantasy is that Gump's bought the pices in China and Frank Lloyd Wright saw them and bought them when he signed the guest book in the San Francisco store.
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