A Small Chi­nese Spa

I was intro­duced to mas­sage by my for­mer boss in Hong Kong, Ning. Now don’t imag­ine inap­pro­pri­ate work incen­tives: Ning may have paid me a ridicu­lous wage and asked me to work on week­ends too often, but he wasn’t this kind of man. Besides, he was any­thing but attrac­tive to me. He was in his fifties, bald, and he tucked his shirt into his pants. He was also mar­ried to my very bitchy man­ager Jojo. All that also some­how explains why when Ning asked me to come with him for a mas­sage, I didn’t bat an eyelash.

We were then on a busi­ness trip in Shen­zhen, across the bor­der. The whole week­end had been kind of crazy: I had just dis­cov­ered we would be sleep­ing at our small office instead of at the hotel (and by “at the office”, I mean we lit­er­ally slept on the wait­ing room sofa) and I had been intro­duced to about 50 peo­ple over a very Can­tonese diner (pig intestines and chicken feet).

After the ter­ri­fy­ing diner expe­ri­ence men­tioned above, Ning and I had rushed into a taxi. It was close to mid­night and I thought we were head­ing back to the office/ hotel. But we had stopped in front of a tall build­ing. “Relax time”, had said Ning. For a sec­ond, a lot of things crossed my mind. But I shrugged and fol­lowed him. Eh, I was 18.

We were greeted at the front of the build­ing by two Chi­nese women who fussed around us. One led Ning away and the other one motioned me to a dif­fer­ent door which opened on a small bath­room with a shower. “Please, take off your clothes and make your­self com­fort­able”. “Great”, I thought, “Ning actu­ally sold me to a pimp. I guess I should have fin­ished the report that was due two weeks ago…”.

I did what I was told. I took off my clothes and took a warm shower. I changed into loose cot­ton clothes that were pro­vided and waited at the door. Soon enough, the woman came back and led me to another room, where I found my boss sim­i­larly dressed and already lying on a mas­sage table.

A light bulb switched in my head. Mas­sage? Fully clothed? Sure! After a cou­ple of min­utes, Ning was snor­ing and I was being mas­saged by two guys. “Quite sur­real”, I thought, “but nice.…” The mas­sage itself lasted for a cou­ple of hours. All in all, we spent the night there. After the mas­sage, we relaxed for a while in com­fort­able chairs sip­ping cold tea and smok­ing cig­a­rettes (well, at least, I did. Ning was still sleep­ing). And then, I had a feet mas­sage, fol­lowed by more tea and cig­a­rettes. I never had a bet­ter time with my boss.

And so I was intro­duced to body mas­sage. In fact, I became quite addicted to it. I some­times indulge myself in Canada, but mas­sages are quite expen­sive… so I fig­ured I’d get one in Bei­jing, where they are much cheaper.

A few days after we arrived, I found my way to a small Spa near the Worker Sta­dium in Dongzhi­men: Bodhi (not a ching­lish name!). It was well past 8 p.m., a per­fect time for mas­sage in China: most spa open late, and unlike in the West, it is com­mon to be pam­pered at night. I climbed a few stairs and walked to the recep­tion. The lights were dim, the voices were soft and hushed, and four Chi­nese women wear­ing tra­di­tional qipao were fuss­ing over clients.

– Mas­sage?
– Yes.
– Fol­low me.

I was led to a small room at the end of a hall­way. She closed the door behind me. Clean clothes were on the chair as well as a pair of slip­pers. I changed—hoping the Chinese-sized clothes would fit—and laid on my stom­ach on the mas­sage table. Can­dles were light­ing the room with a warm yel­low glow which com­pli­mented the wooden floor. I yawned. Long day.

It is cus­tom in China to be mas­saged by the oppo­site sex and so a few sec­ond later, my masseur entered the room. I asked for a tra­di­tional Chi­nese mas­sage, hop­ing to live my expe­ri­ence in Hong Kong again. I closed my eyes and started to relax, my arms loose. He started work­ing on my back, gen­tly press­ing in between my collarbones.

Now, I don’t know if you ever had a mas­sage in North Amer­ica, but if you had, you must have noticed that every­thing is done to make you feel com­fort­able. You fill up a sheet with your med­ical his­tory and must men­tion any con­di­tion that may affect your expe­ri­ence. You are some­times asked to cir­cle the body parts to mas­sage on an anatomy chart. The masseur will then double-check and ask ques­tions like “is that okay if I mas­sage your lower back/ col­lar­bone etc.?”. And you are strongly encour­age to let the masseur know if any­thing makes you feel uncom­fort­able or hurts. In short, you are given a lot of pri­vacy and mas­sages are very gen­tle since most peo­ple want to relax.

Well, let me tell you, tra­di­tional Chi­nese mas­sages are quite dif­fer­ent. Two min­utes after I had closed my eyes, the masseur was kneel­ing on my butt, twist­ing my left arm in a way I didn’t think it could or should be twisted. He then pro­ceed to pinch my back (I didn’t even know I had fat in that part of my body!) and pull my fin­gers. Almost simul­ta­ne­ously. He stretched my back, my legs and pull my ears. He pressed, he tapped, he kneaded, he stroked. I did close my eyes but I didn’t sleep.

The whole expe­ri­ence was sur­pris­ing to say the least but I wasn’t in pain. I could feel my blood flow­ing through­out my body and I was breath­ing reg­u­larly. It felt good. An hour later, I left feel­ing light and happy. How could such a rough mas­sage do that, I wondered.

I went back for another tra­di­tional mas­sage before we left. This time, it wasn’t in a Spa but in a small hutong behind the hos­tel. The masseur was wait­ing out­side. He was a young guy from Hunan who didn’t like Bei­jing that much, because it was crowded and it didn’t have moun­tains and lakes, some­thing that Hunan appar­ently had. He gasped when I told him how much mas­sages cost in Canada. He mas­saged me with as much zeal as the pre­vi­ous time but this time, I was expect­ing it and enjoy it thor­oughly. I walked out feel­ing so good, almost like if I was on drugs.

I haven’t had a mas­sage since I came back to Ottawa. I’m not sure I’d enjoy the “western-style” mas­sage now… and I have to pay about $70, while in Bei­jing my two mas­sages aver­aged $15. I may have to go to Chi­na­town… Like an SM girl, I’m now addicted to rough massages!

Related arti­cles:

1. A Thai Mas­sage Story
2. My Seven Links
3. Wel­come To The Jungle
4. A Parisian Bug Story
5. The Office