But more important than the fact that Wong selected old songs is the way the music appears in the soundtrack. The soundtrack, mostly consisting of popular songs of decades past, reinforces this notion of expiration and hints at nostalgia (Teo 2005, 53-54). Life, Wong seems to be saying, is also about expirations. He notes that Wong makes time tangible via expiring objects вЂ“ soap, canned pineapple, old rags (Teo 2005, 63). TeoвЂ™s argument is particularly perceptive. Many scholars (Teo 2005 Abbass 1997 Huang 2002) have analyzed WongвЂ™s manipulation of time, space, and chance in Chungking Express via narrative and visual analysis. Wong grasped this apprehension and wove it into his filmвЂ™s dual narrative. Apprehension about chance, change, and the future permeated Hong Kong at the time of the film вЂ“ in three years, Great Britain would return control of the city to mainland China. The film, like the short story, emphasizes that life is a string of chances to which we react. This quote from a simple three-page tale inspired Wong Kar-waiвЂ™s 1994 film Chungking Express (Teo 2005, 50). Their future remains ambiguous.В«Was it really alright for oneвЂ™s dreams to come true so easily?В» Murakami HarukiвЂ™s narrator asks in his short story, On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning (Murakami 1993, 71). Faye asks him where he wants to go with the boarding pass, and 663 says he'll go wherever she wants to take him. She doubts it and writes him up a new one. As Faye's about to leave, he gets the boarding pass she gave him a year ago, wrinkled and water-stained, and asks if anyone will accept it. 663 then asks if she can send him a postcard if she leaves, but she says he wouldn't read it anyway. He asks her to stay for the grand opening in a couple days, but she says she does not know if she can. She finds that the cop has bought the snack bar and is converting it into a restaurant. In the last scene, Faye, now a flight attendant, returns to Hong Kong. Standing the cop up after a last-minute decision to see the world before settling down, she leaves him a boarding pass drawn on a paper napkin postdated one year later.

Faye, however, never shows up for the date, and the snack bar's owner, who is her cousin, goes to the restaurant to tell the cop that Faye left for California. Gradually, her ploys help him to cheer up, and he eventually realizes that Faye likes him and arranges a date at the restaurant 'California' (an actual place in Lan Kwai Fong at the time). She finally tells him of the letter but he keeps delaying taking it or even reading it. The envelope also has a spare set of keys to the cop's apartment.ДЇaye uses the keys to frequently break into his apartment by day to redecorate and 'improve' his living situation. Everyone in the snack bar reads the letter, which is assumed to be the flight attendant's way of telling the cop that their relationship is over. She leaves a letter for the snack bar owner to give to the cop. The flight attendant waits for the cop around the snack bar, and finds out he is on his day off. He meets Faye, the new girl at the snack bar. In the second story, the unnamed Cop 663 is similarly dealing with a breakup, this time with a flight attendant.

Chungking express plot