How We Got from Nantes to a Massage Parlour in Beijing

My phone beeped just as we were about to leave the apartment, with our backpacks already on, awkwardly trying to tie our shoes while stopping my mum’s cat from following us outside. (I think I have a bad influence on this cat.)

Feng, all jet-lagged in Paris, texting before the train?

No. The ANTS, France’s alphabet-soup agency for all official ID documents. Mark’s passport was ready. I burst out laughing—what timing!

“Can we go pick it up, then?”

“We don’t have time! We’ll do it after China. You’re travelling with your Canadian passport anyway.”

Phew. One less thing to stress about. Apparently, I enjoy dealing with French bureaucracy annually: 2023 brought a renewed French ID for both of us, last year my passport, and this year Mark’s first one.

Mission (almost) accomplished.

Back to worrying about… just everything else, starting with the train. Had the heat melted the tracks? Was a forest fire blocking the way somewhere between Nantes and Charles de Gaulle Airport? Would we arrive on time for our flight to China?

It’s crazy what scenarios you come up with after only three hours of sleep, thanks to packing, work delays, and the usual pre-flight catastrophizing.

I’m telling you, it never ends in my brain.

I tried to sleep on the train, but there were too many noisy kids in our carriage. I would have happily handed out tablets or phones—my own “kid” was perfectly behaved, busy catching up on Snapchat because I had refused to share the Wi-Fi code at my mum’s apartment or buy him a SIM card.

We arrived at Charles de Gaulle perfectly on time—what had I been worrying about?

We even managed to get off the train in the mere seven minutes it was scheduled to stop there, even though half of the passengers were also getting off with bulky luggage and multiple suitcases.

Phew.

Feng was waiting for us upstairs. This was one thing I didn’t worry about. We’re used to meeting in crowded places around the world, and we always find each other.

Mark resumed Snapchatting. Feng and I caught up and tried to stay awake—me because of my short night, and him because of the jet lag.

When the flight took off at 10:45 p.m., I wanted to sleep straight through. I mostly did, waking just enough to confirm we weren’t detouring around missiles over Iran. Don’t ask. Of course I was slightly worried about it.

By the time we landed in Beijing, it was 3:55 p.m. the following day. We went through immigration (not one of my worries, we have a family visa), picked up our bags (not fast enough, I was getting worried…) and went straight to the China Mobile booth to top up our phones.

You can’t do anything without a phone in China. You use your phone to pay, take the subway, and do pretty much everything else. It’s a cashless country.

I launched my VPN.

Phew. It was working.

We restarted our phones and our brains.

Ready.

But very sleepy.

So sleepy that I actually slept in the taxi to the apartment in Sānlǐtún and, no, it wasn’t a ridiculously long ride like the one from São Paulo Centro to Guarulhos.

By the time we had discovered that there were only disposable towels in the bathroom, but also a balcony, a washing machine, and two big beds, it was past 6 p.m.

Feng and Mark went to eat. I went the opposite way, looking for the impossible—bāozi. These delicious steamed buns are sold for breakfast in hole-in-the-wall shops, so the chances of finding steamers with bāozi left in them were slim. But apparently, I’m lucky in Beijing this year because I found some.

Back at the apartment around 10 p.m., Feng, who was still on Eastern Time, just wanted to sleep. But Mark and I were very much awake, so we went out.

“Where do you usually go at night?” Mark asked.

“I run away from you two. Oh, and I get a massage. In fact, let’s go get a massage.”

Just remember that I stopped running for the Mother of the Year award about thirteen years ago.

I knew just the right place, a few blocks from the apartment.

And this is how Mark and I ended up in fancy reclining chairs, feet in the water, getting some Chinese tough love.

“You don’t have to be polite,” I reminded Mark, the massage newbie. “It’s okay to say when it hurts. But I swear it feels wonderful afterwards.”

I was expecting him to grab his phone and surf the web, just like everyone else in China getting a massage, but he wanted to talk. So I told him about 9/11, when I was 18 and living in Hong Kong, and how Feng was in Los Angeles back then, and how we decided to meet in Mexico City, along with more stories he probably already knew. But the sleepy version of him listened as if I were reading Good Night, I Love You.

Afterwards, we grabbed some hand-pulled noodles, and he went to sleep while I finished some work. Feng woke up around 3 a.m., and I caught up with him before falling asleep soon after.

We’ll get over the jet lag.

I’ll never get tired of exploring China.