Chapter 28: Progress Review

“Minister,” Madame Chao welcomed her guests with a warm smile.

Florence Daniels and three of her departmental team had arrived at Madame Chao’s for a review of progress on the JUMIST project.

Madam Chao for her part had assembled the students, her tutors, Mary Tang and the four ‘practice’ males, including Ned, in the training room. Madam Chao had not yet returned Gary and he had been put back in to the hated simple maid’s uniform to allow him to waitress the event. Corey Preston was there as well, anxious to make sure that the JUMIST pilot didn’t, as so many Government schemes, peter out in a flurry of “what shall we do?” - “what do you want to do?” discussions.

From where Bernard knelt, he could see that Madam Chao was making a special effort to impress, presumably in the hope of further contracts. Bernard himself had contributed by shining Madam Chao’s shoes, a job that had been minutely inspected and sent back to him several times by Wan Yu (with an accompanying thrashing) when he had thought that he was finished. If the care she had taken with her appearance spoke of an eagerness to influence Florence Daniels and her ministerial team, her impassive expression gave nothing away.

“I think you will find outcomes as predicted, Minister,” she started. “We have been running JUMIST programme for almost two months now. The four young ladies you asked us to work with learned many things. You see now.” She clapped her hands and the four women that had spent so much time tormenting Bernard and his colleagues over the last few weeks stepped forward. Where a few weeks before there were four rather bashful youngsters there were now four young women exuding confidence.

Madam Chao had them demonstrate their skills, directing the men in a series of prearranged manoeuvres deigned to show how with the use of the cane and the hand the men could be made to adopt certain positions. The display was competent but at the end of it, Florence wasn’t sure that she seen much more than a circus act.

“Your pupils are obviously very competent. That was done very...” She paused, groping for the right word, “neatly.”

Corey felt uncomfortable. It was hardly a ringing endorsement of the girl’s work.

“What is the significance of the different coloured outfits?” Florence Daniels asked.

“The qipao is traditional Chinese dress, as you will know. We use different colours to signify different levels of skill. The girls reach different grades as they progress through their training. First white, then yellow, green, blue, red, brown and finally black. Once they are black qipao, they can progress further. One – two – three dragons. The most revered Mistress in our province in China is five dragons. Very rare.”

“But one of your girls is already blue qipao, I see.”

Fara had managed to pass each of her first three appraisals on her first attempts. Now she stood feeling slightly embarrassed at having been noticed for progressing further than the others. Collette and Daphne were close behind her in green. Anna had achieved her yellow qipao and was waiting to take her green test the following day.

Madam Chao explained how Mary Tang had conducted the examinations.

Although all the girls studied hard, they all found that the way that Mary stood there silently as they went through their paces in the tests was disconcerting. They had managed to show their skills in the way of the hand, the way of the rope, the way of the cane and the way of the look. At the end of each successful test when she had nodded her approval they had all been overcome with excitement. Their squeals of delight were hardly the mark of the implacable dominatrices they aspired to become, but Mary had overlooked that. She had been happy that their performance in their displays so far had been well up to the standard expected and that they were taking so much delight in learning the art that she herself had studied for so long. The men that had been used for these trials had collapsed to the floor at the finish, their backs and arses striped from demonstration beatings, wrists and ankles scored from the girls’ presentation of their bondage skills. At the end of each test, when Mary Tang had taken the student on one side to discuss areas for improvement, Bernard and the others had breathed quiet sighs of relief.