That's the Tin Hau temple, in the Yau Ma Tei neighborhood in Kowloon. It was just a couple of blocks up the street from the apartment we had for our week in Hong Kong, and we almost missed it -- didn't actually go inside until the last day of the trip. Amazing place, and that incense smells wonderful. (We even got to meet and pet the temple cat, a fine scrappy fellow.)
If you click through on the image above to my Flickr stream you'll find a few other pictures from inside the temple as well.
Aha, and I was "seeing it wrong". What I thought I was seeing was reflections in a mirrored surface with (foreshortened) circular cut-outs, which was some kind of artwork. Looking at the other pictures made it clear what was actually there. I kind of preferred my hallucinatory version, but reality wins.
Well, I did compose the shot for maximum abstraction, so perhaps you can re-vision it the way you like best? But yes, as far as I can tell, the circles are brass pans for catching the ash that falls as those spiral incense cones burn. They have inscriptions on the bottoms, but I'm afraid it defeats my rather elementary Chinese reading skills.
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If you click through on the image above to my Flickr stream you'll find a few other pictures from inside the temple as well.
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