Chapter 6: Chinatown

As Bernard was half-dragged from the rickshaw by Liu Wei, he found himself on the pavement outside a brightly painted shop front which declared itself “The Sunrise Tea Parlour.”. Smartly dressed business women hurried in from the street and out again clutching paper cups of their preferred infusion as they set off for their work. None took the slightest notice of Bernard as he was hustled towards a side door.

Behind the door, a flight of stairs led up to a corridor and then on to a small room with eight wire cages ranged in two rows, one above the other against one wall. “New accommodation, round-eye. Better than railway carriage, ha!” Liu Wei laughed as she showed Bernard one of the small cages on the lower row. “Work first, rest later! Clothes off!” she ordered.

Bernard thought about objecting but soon realized there was little alternative. What would he do? Overpowering the dumpy Chinese girl was a physical possibility, he supposed, but then he would have to get out of the building and then where would he go? He really couldn’t imagine. There was no alternative. He would just have to do what he was told.

Liu Wei stood arms folded, watching as he undressed. She looked bored. Bernard didn’t blame her: he was no Adonis. Even with all the physical effort of his work at the station and the limited food rations, he still managed to carry a bit more fat around his waist than he would have liked, and he knew that the way his belly spread out made his prick look even smaller than it really was.

Liu Wei was unimpressed but still seemed to be appraising him physically. Maybe, Bernard thought for a moment, she fancies me a bit and she’ll make things go easier here. His hopes didn’t last long. “So! You are size we call Extra-Large. Here,” she pointed to a cupboard on the wall, “fetch out things and dress.”

Bernard opened the cupboard to be confronted with an array of female clothing. It was hardly a shock;, there were plenty of placements where men were expected to dress as women. There were always good excuses given for it, but Bernard knew it was just another way of letting men know who was in charge. It wasn’t a surprise, but he hated being made to dress that way.

“Start with corset and bra,” Liu Wei ordered. “Need you to have something like woman shape.”

Bernard followed Liu Wei’s instructions, dressing first in the girdle, feeling its boned form pressing his waist in, and then pulling on seamed black stockings sheer enough to show the hairs of his legs through them. Liu Wei grimaced at the sight. “Panties now. Then bra! Cups go in front, stupid,” Liu Wei snapped as he fumbled with the garments. “ Find padding in closet, make big tits shape, understand?”

Bernard nodded, humiliated by the process he was going through, and did as he was told.

“Now, qipao.”

Bernard was puzzled. He’d expected to be put into a maid’s uniform. He’d seen a lot of that: men forced to wait on women, while being dressed as maids. There were plenty of restaurants where men were dressed as waitresses. There seemed to be plenty of women that liked seeing men humiliated in that way, although he found it a bit of a contradiction. If women were so superior, how was it a humiliation to be forced to look like one?

This was different, though. Why was he being asked to put on the traditional Chinese dress with its high collar, short sleeves, and slit skirt? Of course, he didn’t argue but took the dress from its hangar. It was heavy, made in the usual style but of thick leather and styled so that, when the toggle fasteners at the neck were closed, it fitted tightly across his artificial breasts, his belly and hips. It was only where the skirt was slit to one side that he had any freedom of movement. That didn’t last long. Liu Wei gave him a pair of hobble straps to fasten around his legs just above his knees. She then had him put on a pair of plain black high heeled shoes before standing back and contemplating the results of her efforts. Finally, she fastened Bernard’s hands behind his back with a pair of leather cuffs. Bernard was still no wiser as to the purpose of the cross-dressing, but most of his attention was focussed on trying to avoid falling as he teetered precariously on the unfamiliar footwear.

“You play part of implacable, oriental dominatrix, la!” she exclaimed, puzzling Bernard even more. “Here, you try your acting skills!” She reached behind her for a large box and pulled out what looked at first to be a rubber hood. Bernard suddenly recognized that it was, in fact, a face mask, fashioned with the features of Madame Chao. Liu Wei fitted the mask over Bernard’s head, the thick, moulded latex curiously stiff against his own features beneath. Two small pinholes allowed him a little vision but as Liu Wei tightened the straps designed to hold the mask in place, Bernard realized that moulded into it were a series of steel bands that kept his face quite rigid and certainly wouldn’t allow him to move his mouth to speak.