Mr. Chow arrives in Singapore, but the mysteries have not ended. He looks around his apartment/hotel room for something — then asks the super if someone was in his room. The man denies it. But he sees on an ashtray a cigarette with lipstick. Could it be her?

He meets Ping for lunch and tells him this story: in the old days, if someone wanted to tell a secret that no one else would hear, he would find a tree high on a hill, carve a hole into the tree, whisper into that hole, then fill it with mud.

I wonder sometimes if we do something similar with words, letting the true ones slip out, then bury those words in a torrent of blather to drown them out.

Ping responds to this: “what a pain, I’d just go out and get laid.”

Mr. Chow responds “not everyone’s like you,” which flashes me forward to a weekend I have coming up in South Florida with people I’ve known since high school, at least one of them very much like Ping.

“I’m just an average guy,” Ping says. “I don’t have secrets like you. You bottle things up.” Mr. Chow denies that he has secrets, but he’s not exactly telling, not now, not in this way.

There are still empty stairwells in Singapore, just like in Hong Kong. We see a woman’s hand on a railing. Could it be her? We then see her alone in a room. Is it his room? If so, how did she get in? She lights up a cigarette, leaving those traces behind. Once again, Wong is playing with time, flashing back a scene directly after showing us the repercussions of it.

Now a phone call to the newspaper in Singapore for Mr. Chow. He comes to the phone. She hears but does not answer, putting the receiver on her shoulder. She hangs up. Johnny Mathis singing “Quizas quizas quizas” comes on the soundtrack.

The scene jumps back to Hong Kong 1966, the frustrating loss of three years. Three years of longing and disappointment.

Mrs. Chan returns to the old apartment and has tea with her old landlady. She’s moving to the U.S., at least temporarily. She hints at worries over Hong Kong’s future — perhaps related to the Cultural Revolution underway on China’s mainland. Mrs. Chan asks how much to rent out the place, and is promised a discount. She asks about the neighbors and is told it’s not like the old days … she begins to tear up.

“Quizas quizas quizas” comes on again. There’s a man holding a present in his left hand. He visits his old apartment. The old tenant is no longer there. He asks who lives next door. Just a woman and her son, he’s told.

He considers knocking on their door on his way out.