Chungking Express and Food

Wong Kar Wai's *Chungking Express* and Urban Environments

Many critics and reviewers have noted how Chungking Express transforms Hong Kong from setting to character, an urban environment that mirrors and promotes the alienation and coping strategies implemented by all four protagonists. Brigette Ling, the Woman in the Blonde wig, wears femme fatale disguise that includes a trench coat, blonde wig and sunglasses. He Zhiwu, Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) jogs each time he loses a girlfriend, claiming the sweat eliminates his tears. Faye (Faye Wong) listens to "California Dreaming" at such a high volume that she can't think. And Cop 663 (Tony Chiu Wai Leung) pretends his ex-girlfriend is waiting for him in his apartment, ready to jump out of a wardrobe in her flight attendant uniform. 

Although I certainly agree with these interpretations of how the Hong Kong environment both perpetuates and ameliorates stereotypes of the city as an isolating and alienating ecosystem, for me, food and house pets more effectively connect these human figures with nature and each other. Food, goldfish, and a pet dog illustrate ways an urban environment can promote interdependence rather than separation. 

Food and setting interconnect in Chungking Express through the crucial location in the film: the Midnight Express takeout restaurant. The restaurant provide parallels and points of overlap between the two seemingly disparate romance narrative in the film. Cop 223 frequents the restaurant, using the public phone to call all of his ex-girlfriend's relatives and check his messages. The lack of response to these call leads Cop 223 to the bar where he meets and immediately falls in love with the Woman in the Blonde Wig. Nearly every day, Cop 663 buys food at the restaurant for his girlfriend, moving from a chef salad to other dishes at the owner's suggestion. He even claims she left him because he bought fish and chips and decided she wanted variety in men as well as meals. Faye works at the restaurant to help out her uncle, filling in when an employee leaves suddenly. 

But food also connects characters and the environment in less obvious ways. When his girlfriend May leaves him, Cop 223 buys one can of pineapple slices per day with an expiry date of May 1, explaining, "We split up on April Fool's Day. So I decided to let the joke run for a month. Every day I buy a can of pineapple with a sell-by date of May 1. May loves pineapple, and May 1 is my birthday. If May hasn't changed her mind by the time I've bought thirty cans, then our love will also expire." On the last day, he eats all 30 cans. His voiceover narrates the journey the pineapple took before ending up in the cans, from field to processing plant, to store shelf. This focus on process explicitly connects him to a natural world beyond but integral to the life of Hong Kong. 

 Cop 223 eats voraciously throughout his narrative, not only devouring gallons of pineapple, but also eating four chef salads with french fries and a burger during the night he watches Woman in the Blonde Wig sleep. These American foods tie Cop 223's story with Cop 663's in a couple of ways. First because Cop 663 buys a chef salad every day until convinced to provide variety. Secondly because Chef Salads are associated with California, the "California Dreaming" of Faye's song and the locations where they "meet" in parallel--the California Bar and the actual California. 

Food brings Faye and Cop 663 together, too. Although after changing shifts, Cop 663 eats Cantonese Food at an outdoor stall instead of American takeout, Faye finds him on her trips back from the produce market, easily convincing him to carry her heavy baskets of fresh vegetables back to the restaurant. The film's conclusion at the Midnight Express counter also connects the two, but I've provided way too many spoilers already. I've also run out of time, so I will need to write about the power of house pets in a later post.