FEATURES / HK-SG DIGITAL TRAVEL BUBBLE
PUI O, LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG
Introduced by Kit Fan
One November, after years of not being at home to a place I’m now struggling to call home, I returned to Pui O on Lantau Island not knowing what I wanted to know. There is only one Delphi in ancient Greece where oracles might have been given to the curious who sought answers about the mystery of time and the mind. The sea is Delphi multiplied. I ask, and it falls and rises, mouthing words at me that I heard before but don’t want to listen anymore.
The Spotless Mind
After months of smoke and chase
after absorbing the errors and partitions
I want to see the sun setting
irresponsibly on Lantau Island
saffroning the outgoing waves
too quick for the sand to grasp, as they swell
and retreat, regulating
the pulse like the peaks and troughs
of the mountainous backdrop
darkening against the duck-yolk yellow
that burns away my retinas
so I can see my home blind,
undivided, back in time
to the re-undiscovered fishing village
where the seafoam covers
my feet, withholding what can
and can’t be changed
while I keep returning here to pick shells
and kick the ocean for
answers, and in these final moments
of the thin light dismantling
the day, nine water-buffalos, abandoned
farmhands of rice labour
stroll childishly along the edge to clean
their hoofs and replenish
lost salt, waiting for the heat to drop –
and suddenly I smell the old
ink brushing my neck, thickening
the sky into a spotless
void, and I shiver.
by Kit Fan
Wunderkammer I: Requiem for Billy
by Yeow Kai Chai
VOID DECK, SINGAPORE
Introduced by Yeow Kai Chai
My favourite place is something very common at the foot of many public housing blocks in Singapore, what Singaporeans call the “void deck”. It’s, of course, a misnomer. A “void deck” may look terribly bare or functional, but it is nonetheless a communal space essential to many who use it every day, and where you may find neighbourhood cats such as Ginger here who I’m very fond of.
Wunderkammer II: Ode to Ginger
by Yeow Kai Chai
Void Deck of Many Things
Some nights the wind leaves minor lesions
in the air but nothing happens.Everywhere is clean. The moon, swept away.
Overhead, many encased in concrete
blocks, instant-noodling, instant-lovemaking.The covered walkways mock the sun
and fluorescent ghosts. Even the shadows
too thin to cast shapes on the void deck.I, too, had dark corners and flirted with heights
dangling one leg from the 25th floor,
playing windows and gravity.Many things that could have happened
happen repeatedly somewhere elseas the cat you call Ginger suddenly stops
licking, turns west, and stares at the void
as if a life removed had returnedto Singapore, to this bleached night spot
where not seeing what I should have seen
makes nothing happen.
