Cheongsam
‘Everyone knows Hong Kong, with its roadstead, its junks, its sampans, the buildings of Kowloon and the narrow dress, with the hobble-skirt slit at the side up to the thigh, which is worn by the Eurasians, tall, pliant girls moulded in their silk sheaths cut cleanly at the arm-pits and the neck, sleeveless and with small stand-up collars.
The thin shiny material is worn next to the skin, hugging the contours of the belly, the breasts and the hips and gathering at the waist in a sheaf of tiny ripples, when the young woman, who has stopped in front of a shop-window, turns her head and bust towards the pane of glass where, motionless, her left foot touching the ground only by the tip of a very high-heeled shoe, ready to resume her walk in the middle of the interrupted step, her right hand stretched forward, a little away from her body, and her elbow half flexed, she contemplates for a moment the young woman in wax, wearing an identical dress of red silk, or her own reflection in the window ...
