PetroChina Official's Affair Spawns Fashion Critiques

Hu and Dong as they walked down "Douyin Street"

There's a street in Chengdu that's nicknamed "Douyin Street" or "TikTok Street", a main pedestrian area where street photographers hang out to catch wannabe models strutting their stuff -- or maybe a Chinese official holding hands with his alleged mistress.

That was what happened to Hu Jiyong, now a former Party Committee Secretary and executive director and general manager of Beijing Huanqiu Construction Co, a subsidiary of PetroChina.

He was summarily fired from his posts and faces an investigation from a disciplinary committee after a video of him and a younger woman was posted on Douyin by a street photographer.

Hu looks much younger in these manga versions

It was after the clip of the couple was posted did some viewers recognised Hu and his supposed mistress, Dong Sijin, who was also a PetroChina employee (also sacked).

In the video they turn heads because Hu wears a pink polo shirt that matches Dong's pink and lime green dress that netizens have described as "a mistress dress" -- now nicknamed "dismissal dress". Not only that, but she was holding a limited edition mini hibiscus Lady Dior handbag that costs around US$6,100.

Perhaps what was even more intriguing about the whole incident was that the couple knew they were being photographed and filmed and didn't act like they had anything to hide.

So Hu has lost his job, probably his girlfriend and his wife too, but he and Dong are forever immortalised in a series of memes from manga to Lego, to a guy in a dress holding hands with another man in a pink polo.

And here's the Lego version

Oh and yes that "mistress dress" is doing a hot trade on Taobao, with some 4,000 orders for the dress. Overwhelmed by the demand, the online store even asked customers to "shop rationally".

There probably isn't the same demand for the designer handbag though.

Nevertheless, some netizens could not understand why someone would want to dress like Dong, while others lamented how it was difficult to pull of wearing pink. One person even defended the dress, writing: "Every dress is probably worn by a mistress at one point. The dress is innocent!"