I’m always looking for the missing poem, the free city, sun vigor, the day-glo orange people. I want to go in deeper, let loose, to be caught up in what Thomas Wolfe called “the slow incense of the East,” to break out of the confines of the traveler’s state of competitive comparison and repetitive judgment, to boldly go where few laowai (foreigner) have gone before. And that’s one entirely plausible explanation of how I ended up with those marks on my back. Another is quite simple: I frequently let China have its way with me. When I first arrived here, I got some great advice from a teacher in Xian. She said, "to be effective as a teacher you need to do two things: Keep you energy up and get massages often." Now I had no problem with the energy (like a sponge I feed off the energy of my students), but the massage part proved to be problematic. You see, when a male foreigner asks a Chinese person where to get a massage, it is usually assumed they are using code to mean a massage with an 'extra something.' I got lots of meticulous directions to palm parlors, but none to legitimate massage places. Then I heard about the coolest thing. In 2006, the Chinese government began an initiative to train blind people to work as masseurs, and it has been a runaway success. It is estimated that there are 110,000 blind people working in this field, and the demand far exceeds the supply of qualified workers. Customers say blind people have a greater sensitivity and sense of touch, and their training is rigorous and extensive. Once I heard about it, I was there the very next night. The masseuse introduced himself but I couldn’t understand what he said, so I nicknamed him Kung-fu Panda (KFP). He mimed I should take off my shoes but leave my clothes on, and to lie down on the massage table, where he covered me with a sheet. Then, KFP proceeded to work me over, kneading, slapping, gouging in deep, using his hands, forearms, elbows, and karate chopping my body, lighting up places I forgot I had and rendering me a dazed, stuttering, agreeable blob of disjointed thoughts and conclusions. The whole thing lasted an hour. I immediately bought a card good for ten massages for 400 RMB. That works out to $6.35 per one-hour massage. The next time, he went in deeper, and I was snap-crackling-and-popping the whole hour but began to feel parts of my body reawakening. The third time, he was not there and another blind man whose name I also couldn’t understand took over, and if the other guy was Kung-fu Panda this guy was more like a Tai-chi Panda (TCP). He was smooth, and made me feel parts of my body I hadn’t felt since the Cold War, yet parts of my back still felt stiff. Through gestures, he asked if I would let him attach glass globes to my back. Now I had seen other people have this done, but it looked absolutely medieval, not to mention painful. (I learned later that it was called Cupping Therapy.) Yet, I trusted this guy and did not want to let my cowardice stand in the way of a good Coughing Dragon Diary post, so I took off my shirt and lay back down. He first oiled my back and I could hear his lighter clicking on and off as somehow he heated up the globes that he suctioned to my back, moving them along my meridians, then down to my waist, pulling them off with a pop, kind of like the sound children make by sticking a finger in their mouth then popping their cheeks. Next, I heard the lighter clicking furiously, and he began suctioning multiple globes on my back, until I counted 16, all of them adhering like remora fish attached to a shark, or big-mouthed groupers greedily trying to suck the life out of me. Yet, it wasn’t all that unpleasant. I could feel warmth being generated until my back was on fire. Not knowing how long it would last, I endured for the sake of science. Ten minutes later he removed them with a suffused pop. He went back to massage a part of my back that had previously been painful to me to show that now the area was pain free. It was truly remarkable. Then he wiped away the oil and had me sit up. The room was spinning and crackling, and he left me there to collect myself. It was then that every curiosity seeker found an opportunity to come to the doorway to see how the laowai was taking it, or to see me without a shirt, or to see if I had scales, or perhaps was covered with fur. I staggered out and into the evening feeling subdued but fine. I slept well and woke feeling really good, really loose. It was only after taking a shower that I realized I had angry-looking cupping hickeys all up and down my back. I immediately freaked, then went online and discovered this was common and that they should be gone in about a week. Practitioners are said to be able to read the hickeys and diagnose your health. Me, I had fun telling the unsuspecting that I went swimming in the Yellow River and was attacked by giant leeches. All in all I have been feeling pretty good and will allow KFP and TCP to continue to have their way with me. I will, however, draw the line at therapeutic bloodletting.
3 Comments
|
|