Title:
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King of Kowloon
Los Angeles, United States
POOL UCLA – Nostalgia Issue no. 4
2019
5″W X 5″L X 5″H
Digital Drawings
Dominique Cheng, Kristina Ljubanovic

POOL – UCLA

1. There was a bronze statue, 8-foot high and heavy, from the Ming dynasty. Mr. Tsang Foo bought it, placed it in Five Dragon Hall. Near to it was the palatial villa, which contained pavilions, terraces, pools, the “ragged” school with its library that stored Buddhist scripture. Bright white and stately, Tsang Foo Villa stood against emerald hills. Each day was filled with clamor and children’s laughter. Potted plants falling and crashing on tiles below…

Title:
Location:
Program:
Date:
Size:
Medium:
Team:

King of Kowloon
Los Angeles, United States
POOL UCLA – Nostalgia Issue no. 4
2019
5″W X 5″L X 5″H
Digital Drawings
Dominique Cheng, Kristina Ljubanovic

1. There was a bronze statue, 8-foot high and heavy, from the Ming dynasty. Mr. Tsang Foo bought it, placed it in Five Dragon Hall. Near to it was the palatial villa, which contained pavilions, terraces, pools, the “ragged” school with its library that stored Buddhist scripture. Bright white and stately, Tsang Foo Villa stood against emerald hills. Each day was filled with clamor and children’s laughter. Potted plants falling and crashing on tiles below…

Visitors arriving Sundays were welcomed by a choir, a brass band, cups of tea pre-poured and sugared. And yet the statue was prohibited from view. An exception was made June 5-6 of the lunar calendar, year of the dragon. The locals arrived in droves to see the biggest bronze statue in all of Hong Kong. Still, the barefoot kids weren’t allowed in. Tsang Foo—oil merchant and distributor, boss of Tsang Foo Foreign Coal Company, your great great grandfather—built this, he said.

2. Before it was a ferry cruise terminal, it was Kai Tak airport. Before that it was Po Kong Village and Tsang Foo Villa. And before that it was dirt roads and yellow Pui trees. Do not think they are unconnected. The past reaches forward and the present reaches back, like the tentacles of a squid emerging from a pond. Like a reed bending deeply to drink.

3. Wait till you get a load of this guy. Thirty-fifth generation claimant to the Sau Mau Ping estates, for whom the whole of Hong Kong is a rightful inheritance, he said. Tsang Tsou Choi wrote these words upon the city, with a great, broad brush dripping black ink: “I am King of Kowloon.” Following that, the names of his ancestral line, a veritable who’s who of the Zhou dynasty. See, there? That’s your grandfather’s name, scratched on the side of a post-box, atop the insignia of Queen Elizabeth II. Mr. Tsang sold through Sotheby’s and showed at the Venice Biennale. But you know, in the end, he died poor and hobbled in an old persons’ home, clutching scrolls to his chest.

4. Imagine a city that’s carved—cut through by an aluminum cylinder—and that’s Kowloon. Imagine the shortest runway in the world, a checkerboard laid over a mountain, a sharp right turn and a fast descent. Imagine what that might look like from below. Everyday I glanced out my window and saw an airplane passing by, like a great dragon, he said. So close and roaring the apartment twisted on its foundations and the fillings in my mouth popped loose.

5. Five Dragon Hall and Tsang Foo Villa are destroyed. The walled city is dismantled. Kai Tak is retired. The checkerboard is overgrown. Tsang Tsou Choi’s writings are cloaked, gone. A glass city rises, without fingerprints. Before the airfield is scrubbed clean, can we read, one last time, its history in little puffs of exhaust? Can you write a story with shadow across a building’s face? Memories linger, then fade. They can be propped up carefully—scaffolded. It’s macabre in a way, but you can still dance with it.