Massage

So another thing most people know about me is that I don't really like to be touched. I'm definitely not a huggy-type person. But, my friends here always like to get massages, and so I've been along several times. You can't really escape being touched in China. One because it is incredibly crowded and people always want to squeeze in so they don't have to wait. Two I'm foreign and people like to randomly touch me--on the bus, walking down the street, in the elevator. Just like my arms or hair. I think they like to compare their skin color to mine? Not so sure. I wanted to recap two of our recent experiences.

We have this place really close by. It mainly specializes in foot massages. It is 78 yuan for 100 minutes, which is really cheap. I like it because they give you a drink, pears, and a bowl of dumpling soup :) The picture above is the ginger paste for your knees. A Chinese friend told me it takes the cold out of your bones, whatever that means. All I know is they put that stuff on, layer on steaming hot towels, and wrap it up tightly. Then you let it sit on your knees til it starts to burn. Then, then untie it, but leave the paste on for 10 minutes more. Your knees will tingle for the next hour.

The first of the two experiences happened about a month ago. Joanne and I decided to go after work. When we got there, I think they were trying to tell us they didn't have any private double rooms available. We had no idea what they were saying, so they just led us upstairs. When we got there, it was a room with 5 seats--2 were taken by some Chinese men. We left a chair between us and took the two on the end. Our ladies came in and gave us a great foot massage that was slightly painful--though typical for China. As we were getting the massage, we saw the Chinese men getting their feet scraped. We decided that we'd ask our other coworkers to write it down so we could come back and try it. So after the hour long foot massage part, you get 40ish minutes of back and leg massage. They use a bag of what feels like hot rice and rub it on your back. Joanne and I both had our eyes closed and were enjoying the only relaxing part of the massage when we heard some commotion by us. I opened my eyes and there were the guys, one was massaging my back with this rice bag and one with Joanne. I think they got embarrassed that we saw and quickly left after that. Interesting, right?

The next time we went, we came prepared with our Chinese written to try the foot scraping too. It wasn't painful, and my feet felt really soft afterwards. I guess we pointed to the wrong thing though, because we also got our ears cleaned. My description won't really give it justice, but here it comes. A lady walks in with a caboodle full of strange looking tools. First, she looks at your ears. Then, she dug in the caboodle and pulled out a headlight worthy of some serious cave diving. I laughed so hard when I saw her put it on (I was watching her clean Joanne's ears). So she pulls out various long tools that look kind of like Q-tips, but they each have a different cleaning thing on the end (one looked like a nail polish brush, one a normal q-tip, one looked like some feather thing...) Then she pulled out a long metal looking rod that she wrapped with what I'm assuming was a kleenex. She inserts it into your ear, then takes metal tongs and hits it against her arm. Then she hold the tongs over the metal rod to make it vibrate. Repeat that 6 or 7 times... what a weird sensation. After all that is done, she wipes down your ears with what felt like an alcohol swab. If that wasn't enough, now you get an ear massage. She rubs all over the ear lobe, then folds your ear over and massages it. Very odd. My ears have never felt so clean.

Needless to say, we were at this massage place for about 2 hours, maybe longer. Gotta love it.