Wearing a pink polo shirt tucked into his chinos, it was not Hu Jiyong, a Chinese construction executive with the look of a man born to wear a business suit, who caught the street photographer’s eye, but the younger woman he was holding hands with.

Xiao Mi, who makes a living taking pictures of the fashionable crowds in Chengdu, a city in southwest China, said he had been drawn to photograph the woman in a figure-hugging pink floral dress — who also happened to be Hu’s employee and mistress. “They didn’t refuse, and many photographers were taking their pictures,” he said.

Yet the image proved to be the couple’s undoing when it was shared on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, where Hu, the general