Massage in China

You must excuse my lack of blogging recently: I came down with a bit of a cold last Thursday, and I've been spending more time resting than being on internet since then. We had a 5-show weekend (Friday night through Sunday night) and now we finally have a day off!

Fortunately, my cold did not prevent me from performing, and only really attacked my head and voice today. Our next show is Thursday, so I have to thank my body for timing things so well and giving me these few days to recover.

I have recently discovered that massages are a big deal in China. Not only are they a big deal, but they are cheap! Yesterday, Sunday, we had two shows. Because we had the next day off, a few of us decided to go to our beloved foot massage parlor after the evening show.

When I first heard about the foot massage, I have to admit I balked. I, who have pretty, small feet, balked at the thought of a foot massage. But I gave in and joined the group last week, and it was one of the smartest decisions I've made since coming to China!

The group that went last night was me, Christine (Maria), Emily (Frau Schmidt), Oleg, Pascha, Yascha, Ostop, and Sergei. What are all those Eastern European names, you ask? Those are members of our wonderful orchestra, mostly from Ukraine. Christine, in particular, has befriended a number of them, so we found ourselves in their company for massages last night.

We took cabs to the massage place, and got a room that would fit all of us together. You just wear your regular clothes, so there is no monkey business going on.

The very state of things was funny: three Americans who were speaking like Borat, with faux Kazakhstanian accents (because the Ukrainians rubbed off on us), five Ukrainians with varying abilities in English, and seven Chinese women giving massages. (Yascha disappeared into a different room for a different massage when we arrived ... no, not that! Clean up your mind!) So there we were, with three different languages in one room. The Americans were putting on accents, the Ukrainians were imitating the Chinese women, and the Chinese women were laughing hysterically at us and trying to teach us how to say things in Chinese, but since they didn't speak English, they couldn't tell us what we were saying!

The massage starts off with washing the feet in boiling tea (to clean them, I guess), then leads to an extensive foot massage, then calves, thighs, ... backside ..., back, shoulders, arms, and neck. All of this is included in the foot massage! Many of the men were ticklish, so guffaws and childish giggling would erupt at any moment, which would send the Chinese women into gales of laughter! I admit some of us had had a bit to drink before coming (not me!), but you really didn't need alcohol to make yourself silly in this situation.

I got the longest neck massage of all, and I think this is because I am smaller than the average American (or Ukrainian), so my massage therapist would finish each part of me first, and when she got to the neck, she just kept massaging and massaging until everyone else caught up with her. She was concerned because I have black marks all over the back of my neck: sticky residue from the microphone tape we use on our neck and cheek! (It doesn't stick on my cheek because I have makeup on.) She exclaimed "Aiya!" and similar things, and I couldn't possibly explain what the marks were. How do you mime mic tape?

So she proceeded to try to RUB the marks off my neck as part of the massage. At the time, it felt quite good -- a deep neck massage. But later, I woke up in the middle of the night, and my neck hurt. It wasn't a muscle soreness, but a hurt like a bruise or a poisonous bite: a surface hurt! I still have mic tape - she did not succeed in rubbing it off - but I think she did succeed in rubbing a nice bruise onto my neck. My roommate couldn't see anything today, so I don't know if it will turn into a mark. But what fun, a nice ending to a funny massage!

Anyway, after the massage, they leave you in the room for a while to rest. We did not rest. What we did was try to "fly" each other. If you have never been a child, you will not know what this means, and I will explain. One person lies on her back, with her feet in the air. Another person bends over and puts his stomach on the lying-down person's feet. They hold hands. The person lying down "flies" the other person in the air like Superman! We tried to do this with a number of different combinations, including me trying to fly Pascha, the 6'3" Ukrainian man. (It was unsuccessful.) After a long time, we all pretended to calm down and headed home. It was about 3 a.m. I went to sleep (got to fight this cold! heh heh...), but some of the others stayed up and played cards until breakfast time. Yikes!

I must say, we are lucky to have today, tomorrow (travel), and Wednesday (load-in) off.