Of himself, he wrote that, in his imagination: "I appear as an idol, a wizard, bird-headed, emerald-gloved, dressed in tights made of bright-blue scales."

This blue-glaze chicken-headed teapot has a much taller clay body and continuous petal patterns.

I hesitantly entered the aqua-blue filth-smeared corridors and headed through an impossible maze of hallways, passing unruly-facial-haired men tittering in soiled khakis and sipping tall boys.