Week San (Three)

Shanghai, Week San (Three): October 29 to November 2, 2007.

This was a baaaaad week for me. The weather changed drastically this week for a couple of days…it got super chilly…SF chilly. So I went from a sub-tropical humidity to SF chilly in the course of 24 hours, and that wreaked havoc for me…. I got all sniffly and grumpy. Good Cop teacher suggested I try some Chinese medicinal tea, so I got myself a box at the market, and boiled me up some. It wasn’t too nasty-tasting. I’d like to think it helped, though it’s hard to say. I was medicating myself with Western meds, too. This cold kept me incapacitated for most of the week, though I did find time to arrange tickets for a side trip to Hangzhou, as well as get a massage.

I had a few choices for the massage: at high-end pamper you til you drop, western-style spa, usually in a five-star hotel. Treatments here cost about the same as in the US’ high- end spas. On the other end of the spectrum are the no-frills, Chinese massage parlors. One type, is the blind masseuse parlor, typically one large room with various massage tables, and you hop on, in your street clothes, and the blind masseuse, who is very in tune with the sense of touch, gives you one hell of a massage. You could get an hour’s worth of pummeling for about $5 US. The other type of Chinese massage parlor focuses on the “Oriental foot massage”, and is usually also no-frills, with mostly young girls, who wash your feet in scented hot water, then pummel them to exhausted bliss. These also usually cost $5 – 10 for an hour. Then there’s the midrange massage, which is dominated in Shanghai by the urban retreat center chain called “Dragonfly”. These centers are modeled after your typical western “zen” spa, with lots of dim lighting, candles, soothing music, natural materials like bamboo and cotton, rice paper sliding doors, etc. The best frame of reference I would compare it to would be the Refresh Spa or Kabuki Springs Spa in San Francisco, which are pleasant, mid-range spas. Dragonfly’s treatment menu is pretty simple: one hour increments of Chinese-style or Shiatsu massage, in cotton pajamas that they provide for you to change into; oil massage, which is akin to the aromatherapy, bare-skin massage we’re more familiar with in the west; and the ubiquitous “Oriental foot massage”, which is all about TLC for your tootsies. For an hour of pampering, it will set you back about $20. Needless to say, I went with the mid-range Dragonfly spa, especially since I found one only 10 minutes by foot from my hotel. The Hongmei branch is relatively new, and is inside a restored villa that houses several relatively more upscale, non-Chinese restaurants. There’s an Indian restaurant, a Mexican cantina, a Thai restaurant, and a pub. The entry into the old villa is very low-key, I walked past it once without realizing it housed all the goodies inside. You enter through a stone and metal gate shrewn with ivy, and enter a large, open air courtyard. Roughly eight houses open into the courtyard, each a restaurant or spa. The houses maintain their original façade, and there is ample greenery surrounding each house. On a sunny day, it reminds me a bit of what a Tuscan villa would look like. At night, the neon lights and blaring music cuts into the daytime tranquility. But back to the massage. I thought I’d start with an hour of Chinese-style…and it was wonderful. Just what I needed after two weeks of sleeping on the hotel’s super firm (ie. Hard as rock) mattress. The therapist was a male, which was a little unexpected, actually, since I thought the role reversal (usually men are massaged by women here) would have been really weird for a dude. But he was absolutely professional, and put me at ease immediately. I guess the spa primarily caters to females used to the “western” spa experience, and the therapists are trained accordingly. The individual treatment areas were tiny, basically just enough room for a table and the therapist to maneuver around. We were separated from the treatment area next door by a thin rice paper sliding door, but the space is extraordinarily quiet, with soothing music, and underscored by the very faint sound of pummeling flesh, resounding throughout. The Chinese-style massage was very similar to many massages I’d had in the West, which indicates that much massage therapy has roots in Traditional Chinese Medicine, what with acupressure points and whatnot. The one thing that I didn’t expect was the focus on the ears…he gave my ears much TLC (to the point where I was thinking, “ear fetish, much?”), which I later discovered is because there are many Traditional Chinese Medicine pressure points in our ears.

The massage was over much too quickly, and I was tempted to add another hour, right there on the spot, but I resisted. I didn’t resist, however, buying 9 more hours of massage by the bright receptionist, though, who showed me how much more economical it would be to do so (my $20 massage became $14…30% savings!). Yes, I was very mellow after the massage, and have to admit, I didn’t put up much of a fight. I figured if I didn’t use up the certificates (though I intend to, believe you me) the certificates have no expiry date, so I could use them for my next trip (and I intend to come back, believe you me) or I could give them as Thank You gifts to my school hosts here. So in essence, for the price of one massage in SF, I got 10 massages in Shanghai. I heart Shanghai.

One more note about the “no-frills” massage parlors: the few that I have poked my head into, including the foot massage parlor at my hotel, looked a lot like the foot massage parlor I went to a three years ago in Wei Zhou in southern China: old Chinese rosewood furniture, dusty linoleum flooring, very young, all-female staff…it reminded me of a family association meeting room, reeking of cigarette smoke. The only thing missing was the mah jong tables! Another thing that gave me pause was the fact that the patrons were all male…middle-aged males…you kind of got the idea that this was something businessmen did together, while guzzling brandy and smoking stogies. I did not relish the idea of kicking back with a bunch of old dudes amid cigar smoke, while young girls pummeled my feet. Three years ago, I went to the foot massage parlor with my Mom and a bunch of her middle-aged lady pals, so it was a little less awkward, on the gender front, at least. On the age front, it was kinda uncomfortable for me…though the massage was kick arse. Them gals be strong. All of the therapists were young, and in the course of the communal massage, shared their very sad and similarly tragic stories of leaving school in order to earn money for their families. They made very little money, if the cost of the massage was any indication, and they all lived cooped up in a communal living area onsite. I’m sure I was more self-conscious than they were, but I couldn’t help but think, we are so very similar yet so very different…is it odd for them to be servicing a patron so very close in age and appearance to them, yet worlds away in opportunities for advancement from them? I found myself very depressed after that massage, and truth be told, can’t bear to go to a similar establishment again. Intellectually, I know it’s just a business transaction, and if I didn’t patronize them, they would have that much less income…and a part of me suspects they may have been pouring on the sob story a bit strongly…but we saw their living conditions (we went looking for them to give them gratuities in person, so that the boss wouldn’t get a cut of that extra money), and they were quite appalling. Plus, I suspect that we were probably much more pleasant patrons than their usual customer…who knows how they’re treated by some super-traditional, middle-aged men. I think the guilt of having so much in comparison, and not doing very much with the opportunities that I have been given thus far has me avoiding those old school massage parlors like the plague. My issues, really.

The dichotomy in living standards here has been bothering me lately. Seeing beggars in front of designer boutiques and tony restaurants, and old, cramped apartment buildings with hand-washed laundry hanging in the balconies next to shiny, dizzyingly high skyscrapers and hotels, has put a spotlight on Shanghai’s growing income gap for me. Even the block my charming little locally-owned hotel is on shows signs of the income disparity. There is the hotel, the pricey banquet restaurants, the fountains, the sweeping swank Roman-style villas, and the serene private spa…but nestled among these are a couple of old, rundown apartment buildings, with laundry hanging from bamboo poles in the windows, giving an air of a not-so-well-off life..comparatively speaking, of course. The people living there are not beggars…they are hard-working people who have more economic opportunity now than ten years ago, and probably are better off now than they were ten years ago. I’m not sure where I’m going with this train of thought…more guilt about having so much, relatively speaking? I know I felt uncomfortable when I saw a young woman, probably about my age, washing her hair on the street in front of her dilapidated home. Especially since I had just emerged from a hot shower, with freshly shampooed hair, from my immaculate hotel room less than an hour before. Again, I dunno where I’m going with this. I know I am applying my idea of “well-being” to another person, and I am feeling darned guilty about having more. Don’t worry guys. I’m not gonna go all “Into the Wild” just quite yet.

I think that is as serious as I can get in this blog. Let’s move on to more lighter topics. Halloween here isn’t super crazy…it was a little odd...locals didn't really get into it, though many mainstream stores, like the supermarkets and department stores, had Halloween displays and merchandise. Really, though, only those peeps or orgs with any connections to the West really made any effort. My school, for example, put up some orange balloons, had an electric jack-o-lantern, and a candy dish. And that was a huge effort! Of course, all the expat joints went crazy that night, as they'll take any excuse to party. I stopped by a nearby Cuban-themed bar for a Halloween drink with a Cuban flair, but didn't have too wild a time, as I was still simultaneously nursing a nasty cold, and going through "bloody hell". The cramps, man. The cramps…