I went to a book talk in Hong Kong Reader by Jimmie Lu, a write based on Peng Chau Island, an outlying island of Hong Kong. With only 12 or so people in the audience, it was a full house organised in collaboration with the publisher - Islanders Press. Moderated by Jimmie’s best friend, whose name was not introduced in the talk, it was a gentle conversation about observations in relationship with the lands of our often forgotten outlying parts of the city, the islands.

Between the Tides is a collection of observational essays and stories that weave together the daily rhythms and encounters on Hong Kong's outlying islands, particularly Peng Chau. Through a multilingual lens that spans Cantonese, Mandarin, English, and French, author Jimmie Lu captures the delicate interplay between human and non-human inhabitants of these archipelagic spaces. The book presents a mix of magical realism and careful documentation of island life, exploring themes of community, solitude, and the unique temporality of island dwelling. Lu's narrative style emphasizes the importance of careful observation and slow living, drawing from her experiences as both an insider and outsider to paint a portrait of life that exists in the in-between spaces - between land and sea, between languages, and between different ways of being.

With a background in rhetoric, drama and curation, Lu navigates between the rural southern China shores of the pearl river delta, to her studies in France, before moving to Hong Kong. Lu sits in between languages, writing almost-perfectly in a number of voices: English, French, Cantonese and Mandarin. Although this book is published in traditional Chinese, there are phrases dotted in mis-translation in multiple languages. I don’t often go to Chinese language talks, and it was discussed in between Cantonese and Mandarin. This multilingual inbetween-ness correlates with the worlding of the outlying islands, often inhabited with more-than-humans from afar and near.

The prose navigates through small observations of an archipelagic worlding of outlying islands, centering everyday experiences in a a de Certeauian perspective between the sea, ferry, land and their human and non-human inhabitants. Whether the stories represent the actual stuff of reality, they all stem from Lu’s observation and conversations. There is a magic realism in the air, a tinge of speculative story telling in relationship with place and attachment. Observing from afar, Lu comments that, ‘if it is too close, I can’t write,’ alluding to a distance from the subject. A series of field notes taken straight from the heart, this book encourages observatory idling, a careful and careless reading of the world.

I am reminded of the degrowth symbol, which is a snail. Lu recalls a story about a snail crossing the pathway on their way to home. From the anthropocentric perspective, their journey is treacherous, in a state of seemingly constant precarity. We humans may worry for them as they trek in their perpetual state of slowness. But for Lu, it was a chance to understand the island from their eyes. Their constant state of peril is an everyday phenomenon. This reminded me to research from a whole systems perspective, to be reminded that I must not predict or suggest

There was a small moment of mutual aid, discussion of sharing resources with neighbours. Lu was careful to indicate that a neighbour disliked and despised when people called it 「人情味」, or the ‘human touch’ of outlying islands. Instead, suggesting that it should be the norm that neighbours within a community do have the chance to share. This alluded to a quality of people who do choose to move towards these outlying spaces, or marginial / edge conditions - is that many do want to be alone. There is a choice to be lost, a floating condition.