An MRT car named Desire

A Chinaman on the MRT caught my eye. His was a northern Chinese visage, narrow, all cheekbone and no cheek, but with dreamy bedroom eyes. He wasn't tall, he was small. On his elbows, it was snowing scuffed skin, all marks of his unmoisturised maleness. He was in a beige tee and beige trousers, which had a high, too high, waist. He was maybe in his 30s or 40s. He didn't have to say a single word, for his trousers did the talking for him: "So I'm an uncle from China. So?" So I minded my own business, my business now being to look at his eyes - at, not into - and he was looking, too, into the eyes of an auntie. A broad.

When I say broad, I mean broad. She was broad and her arms, larger than life (larger than mine). Her look - bottle-brown short hair, beige sleeveless baggy top, red short skirt and beige strappy shoes - was flapper fashion via This Fashion. Could she be his older sister? Maybe. Maybe it is common in China for a woman to tug her brother towards her every two minutes and molest his manly chest, for a man to lean a little on his sister in public and for a woman to hike up the hem of her skirt as she babbles to her brother. No, they couldn't be brother and sister. Maybe they were married (yes, to other people), making the M18 most of their time on the MRT while on their way to a borrowed apartment.

They didn't just catch my eye, they arrested my attention. I had never seen such foreplay in broad daylight. As the amorous two were alighting, the loving didn't let up. She hugged him from behind, blowing a kiss onto his neck. He shuddered. And I said to myself, "Chui qi!" Wow. I had read about this blowing in Louis Cha classics but I hadn't seen it, not on TV, nor in movies. I thought this move had died with the Xinhai Revolution, the Cultural Revolution or the raising of the Bamboo Curtain. How heartening that such sauciness lives on.