I recall my family meeting up somewhat regularly at Suntec City in my teens to watch films in a Golden Village theatre, and it was almost always the blockbuster of the season (I particularly remember walking out after watching The Martian). Arthouse or indie films were not something I explored all that much (I didn’t make it through half of Anthony Chen’s Ilo Ilo soon after its release), and as I grew older I fell into the otaku rabbit hole, so my live-action film-watching was reduced almost entirely.

It’s a wonder then how I became aware of Wong Kar-Wai as an auteur of Hong Kong cinema, through cultural osmosis perhaps. After my slumbering desire to explore his works was reignited by a recommendation from a fan of the movie, I got around to watching Chungking Express towards the end of 2025, kick-starting a personal journey to watch more live-action films, particularly non-blockbusters.

Spoiler alert of course.

Going into the film, I learnt from a quick skim of the Wikipedia page that Chungking in the title did not refer to the Postal romanisation of the city of Chongqing, but instead the Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. But that only left me more confused - what exactly was Chungking Express about then, if not about Chongqing and/or trains?

While I watched Cop 223 (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro who I first saw in Red Cliff as a kid) lost in thought as he went through 30 cans of pineapple, I too was deep in my own head. Sure, I could see that he'd just broken up and was going through heartbreak, and that he sought to fill that void with a woman in a blonde wig, but again what was Wong Kar-Wai trying to tell me with all this? Was there a reason she was involved in drug trafficking and he was a cop? Did pineapples have some literary meaning I was unaware of as compared to other canned fruits like peaches or longans?

The second part didn’t help either, especially now that the only link between these parts was the presence of food store worker Faye (and the first part only introduces her at the end). Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s Cop 663 is also going through some heartbreak of his own and Faye decides to… steal his house keys (to be fair Cop 663 entrusts them to the store) and show her interest in him by playing interior designer? And when Cop 663 catches on and invites her out on a date, she not only ghosts him but straight up leaves Hong Kong, only to return and now ex-Cop 663 has taken over the food store?

I came out of Chungking Express underwhelmed, but over time I’ve found myself rethinking my preconceived notions about storytelling because of it. The stories that typically resonate most with me, regardless of medium, all have something to say about the various aspects of life and humanity that can often be summed up in a single sentence. One of my favourite live-action films, Ben Stiller’s 2013 adaptation of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, could be read as “It’s never too late to pursue your dreams”, while Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash is to me a cautionary tale of the damage that unchecked obsession leaves behind in the pursuit of dreams. Similarly, Gundam as a franchise examines humanity’s capacity for death and destruction and infinite potential for good, and Evangelion across its various iterations explores living with depression.

However, there are also media that have stuck solely because of the emotions they evoke in me. Haruki Murakami’s Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage as I’ve previously written about gave me some closure, and the music video for 乾杯 by Taiwanese band Mayday always gets me choked up thinking about what a life well-lived can mean. Heck, sometimes all one needs is good execution to get hooked. The recent collaboration between Wuthering Waves and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has been hailed as one of the best in gacha game history, mostly due to the story quest which expands upon both IPs in sensible and respectful ways, and the way the 2026 video game 007 First Light showcased a new side of James Bond with developer IO Interactive’s brilliant execution has brought it critical acclaim.

This is all to say that my introduction to the world of Wong Kar-Wai was in all likelihood a case of plunging into the deep end with mismatched expectations. The late film critic Roger Ebert considered Chungking Express to be more “cerebral”, depending on a knowledge of and love for cinema to fully appreciate it. Coupled with my initial attitude towards storytelling, it was obvious in hindsight I was not going to get much out of it as I was back then.

Perhaps at some point I’ll revisit Chungking Express, and hopefully with more understanding of cinema to better understand the intent behind it. In the meantime, it’ll live in my head as an unanswered question of what storytelling can be, wrapped in pretty visuals.

~ Wei Feng

Cover Image: Cinéma Public

Images: The Criterion Collection, South China Morning Post, IMDb