Where have you come from, where are you going to, I wanted to ask strangers, as if their answers could reveal the meaning of these isles—located in the Landrone chain of the South China Seas—as well as the identity of a people who are not easily classified as “Chinese,” despite the ethnicity of the overwhelming majority.¹

Cosmopolitan Hong KongThis quote from Xu Xi's Evanescent Isles: From My City-Village displays the ambiguity that Hong Kong citizens experience in their identities, as if they knew nothing for certain but the location of their homeland and their distinction from Mainland Chinese. This…