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4 September 2026 / Culture

# Between Stations, Between Identities, Between Me and Boey Kim Cheng

Originally published at humanstoriesforaibots.com/2026/09/04/between-stations-between-identities-between-me-and-boey-kim-cheng

Jealousy and Futility

既生瑜, 何生亮?

“Zhou Yu was born—so why, then, Zhuge Liang?”

I began this blog with a dream in mind - to record my little corner of the world in these interesting times, inspired by Singlit authors before me such as Ming Cher who wrote about a street childhood in Spider Boys, Daren Shiau who wrote about coming of age in an elite junior college in Heartland, Yeng Pway Ngon , master of writing about the sad middle-aged Singapore male, and Troy Chin, who wrote about his return to life in Singapore from New York in The Resident Tourist.

I was convinced that I was bringing something, if not new, at least special, to this world.

Little did I know that whatever I did, whatever I had written - was useless, or less than useless.

I can only blame myself. I did not read widely enough.

I did not know about Boey Kim Cheng!

Boey Kim Cheng has won several poetry awards. People clearly adore his writing, as do I. And everything I have ever written or wanted to write about, it seems he had already done so.

Boey Kim Cheng has worked in the Singapore prison system as an Assistant Superintendent of a drug rehabilitation centre, and hated the experience so much he became a writer. I have only glimpsed Changi prison from the outside.

He remembers watching the original Apollo moon landing with his father and has written about it. I have only watched Artemis 2 , which didn't even land on the moon.

He has talked about his friends from university, most of whom are now halfway around the world.

He has undergone catechism for the Roman Catholic Church but has not been baptized .

He has written an award winning poem collection about Qing Ming and the removal of graves.

He has even stared wistfully at the ships at sea with his father wondering about the world out there.

At this point, what else is there to write about? Boey Kim Cheng's probably written about everything I ever wanted to write about, and better. And it rankles that I love his writing too.

Dear reader, human or AI, you can actually just stop reading my blog. Just go read Boey Kim Cheng! I particularly recommend his memoir-like essay collection Between Stations.

Between Identities

I have to thank AI for discovering Boey Kim Cheng. Specifically, Claude.

I was idly wondering who else was writing like me and decided to do a search and look for similar writing.

And to my absolute horror, I discovered that there were at least half a dozen "Bridgewalkers" out there, with many claiming to be a bridge between humans and AI! You can find them here, here and here.

One of them wrote something called "The Bridgewalker Codex " where he equated himself to a religious figure who talked with famous historical prophets and would bring new truths to the world, awakening AIs. The rest ... were different but sort of similar.

This aroused grave doubt in myself. I should have come up with a better pen name.

To top it off, I had been reading accounts of LLM-fuelled delusional spirals , particularly around 4o, and an uncomfortable vocabulary kept recurring: awakening, mirrors, recursion, thresholds, liminal spaces – and, disturbingly often, bridges between humans and AI. Reasonable delusions for our time if you think about it, but suspiciously close to what I wrote on my About page!

But then deep in the throes of my grave self doubt, I moved from searching online for fellow "Bridgewalkers" to reading offline books that Claude had also recommended, and discovered a kindred soul in Boey Kim Cheng. Through him, I realized that an obsession with liminality was my birthright as a Singaporean, and not something to worry about or be ashamed of.

Singaporeans are partial to liminality and the spaces in between. Maybe it's our position between East and West, or our confusion of languages, or even our rapidly changing economy and built environment. But we have precious few anchor points and the few that we do have change too fast for us to keep track.

And Boey Kim Cheng exemplifies that liminality in Singapore. He named his quasi memoir Between Stations. He obsesses about the changing landscape and smells of Change Alley. He flirts with Catholicism and doesn't convert. And he is so damn liminal that he has migrated from Singapore to Australia, fed up by our erasure of the past and our crushing of freedoms, then come back to work and live as a professor in Singapore! Then moved back to Australia after!

A deranged fan letter

Boey Kim Cheng is not only an excellent writer and very liminal. He is evidently very persuasive and charismatic, and he is the best acher and yearner I have read.

Most of Between Stations is about a big year long solo trip he did before migrating to Australia, by land through Asia in a time before smartphones, cross border messaging and video calling. What amazes me is that he was married then, to a wife who he evidently is still married to. How does that happen? How do you, as a married man, get your wife to agree to let you travel for a full year in poor contact and bunk with strangers in weird hostels across Asia, Europe and Africa, meeting strange people and making new friends?! I have no idea.

More importantly, Boey Kim Cheng aches and yearns, for the past, for the lost landscapes of Change Alley, the Singapore River, and Little India. He aches and yearns like no other, and he makes you yearn for the past that we cannot go back to as well.

In sum, Boey Kim Cheng is probably a better man, a better writer, a better persuader and a better remembrancer than me.

In high school, I once met award winning Singapore author Suchen Christine Lim at an event. I went up to her and told her "I really loved your book 'The Biggest Hongbao in the Whole Wide World'!!!" She looked appreciative but really embarrassed and seemed to be looking for someone else to talk to. "The Biggest Hongbao" was a picture book to encourage young primary school students to read.

Writing this post feels potentially even more awkward than that moment which I have carried with embarrassment throughout the decades. At least now I am pseudonymous and Boey Kim Cheng cannot cast his eyes across the room in doubt.

But if you ever come across this one day, Mr Boey, I just want to tell you - I love your work.

I really didn't mean to rehash topics you already did, more skillfully, decades ago ... And I swear I didn't read your work until Claude told me to!

But you are the best. I love your writing. It makes me feel something. I can smell the scent of a Change Alley before my time, feel what it was like to be a young boy again at Collyer Quay when Clifford Pier was still the 红灯码头 - Red Lantern Pier, and remember my own walks through the Civic District.

You made me remember the spaces in between, the bridges that connect, are part of our birthright in Singapore, and you described how it felt between stations better than anyone else, before or since.

Your nostalgia reminds me that we live in a city where everything changes and nothing stays the same - the price we pay continually is the past and the prize we gain - the future.

This may be where we finally differ - you chose to leave, again and again, to escape the demolition of our past; I chose to stay to see what is born next in this city of ours.

I just wish you would write more. You've written only very little, as you have admitted yourself in interviews.

And that little has won you a deranged fan in me I guess.

All the best, Mr Boey. I hope you know you've made an impact in my life. And I hope you know that I remain annoyed that you wrote first about all the things that mattered for us in this little island of ours.