How I ended up naked and bruised on my 26th birthday

Birthday Celebration at an Italian restaurant!!

On November 22nd, 2008 I (Tiffany) turned 26 in China. It was a day that will be impossible to forget and contains stories that we'll most likely tell over and over again. On Friday, the day before my birthday, David met with one of the English teachers for help planning my surprise gift. Upon realizing it was my birthday, she immediately decided that we needed to have a dinner at Mr. Chen's (another English teacher) house to celebrate. Five minutes later, it was settled. There would be a dinner in honor of me on Saturday evening. Unfortunately we had already made plans with the other foreign teachers in ZhuZhou for dinner. The teachers at our school sounded really displeased by us declining the dinner invitation. I don't know what they expect when the plan so last minute. We usually can make their last minute invitations because, let's face it, we don't have much else going on here. But this was different and we did have plans. So we said "no" for the first time to our co-workers.

My birthday fell on a Saturday, so the day was free of school duties. Saturday morning, David made Chinese pancakes for breakfast. In fact, they were American pancakes, just made with strange tasting flour, without baking powder, and fried in a wok. Like all western food in China our pancakes tasted a little different, but they were the best we could do with an incomplete supply of ingredients. And we both agreed - they were still quite delicious!
After breakfast, we headed out for my surprise birthday gift from David, a Chinese Massage!!! Chinese people take their massages very seriously. In fact, the massage suites are often called "health centers." David chose to take me to one of these "health centers" near our school that had been highly recommended by a fellow English teacher. As we walked in the door, I was greeted warmly by a young, pleasant woman with a walkie-talkie, handed a warm washcloth and whisked away into an elevator which would lead me to the massage rooms. Before getting into the elevator, I said a quick "goodbye" to David, who'd planned to do our grocery shopping for the week while I was in my massage (what a gift that was!!!)

.The floor of the "health center" with the massage suites was beautiful: I walked out of the elevator doors into an elegant spa decorated with bamboo and carved wood. It even smelled like incense. I was escorted to a room with about 7 beds, but I was the only occupant ("VIP" treatment). In Chinese, my escort asked me if I wanted a male of female massage therapist, and I answered that "it doesn't matter." My escort was young and dressed in street clothes. I would have thought she was a client not a worker. She giggled at the awkwardness of our interactions while she put sheets on the massage table. The spa could have been mistaken for a spa in America until you looked at the dingy sheets, possibly washed in river water and left in the polluted air to dry. It was at this point that I realized I didn't know one important custom related to massages in China: Should I take off my clothes for the massage or keep them on? Luckily, I had just learned the Chinese word for "to take off" (as in clothing). I even could read the character for "to take off," because when combined with the character for "water" it means "spin off, or dry," as it is labeled on my washing machine. I also knew the word for clothing. So I asked the young woman, "Should I take off my clothes?" She responded, "Yes, bla bla bla bla . . ." I honed in on "yes," and upon her leaving the room I undressed and crawled under the dingy, (but clean enough) sheets. I had thought "to take off" would never come in handy, and I was feeling quite proud of my formulated sentence. However, two minutes later my escort walked back in, this time leading my blind male massage therapist. Her eyes widened and jaw dropped to see that I had bare shoulders emerging from the sheets. She nearly shrieked with embarrassment; the waiguoren was naked! She hurriedly turned the blind man around (so as to prevent him from seeing anything???) and grabbed a pair of cotton pajamas that had been set out on a table for me to change into. Apparently the "bla bla bla" had something to do with, "Yes take your clothes off and put these other clothes on." Of course, I had not learned the word for "to put on clothes" and now I realize the importance of learning the opposite of all words I study from now on. And thus is the story of how my improved Chinese led to me ending up naked in a Chinese massage parlor when I wasn't supposed to be!

.The massage was great, and hard! I'd had one massage in China before, and going in I knew enough to expect a few bruises from the experience. The Chinese massage therapists are really good at what they do and often use reflexology and trigger points, which send shivers down your spine. I laid on the table for an hour thinking about how this massage was different from one in America. For starters, there was a TV on in the room playing your choice of irritating stage shows. (I finally asked my massage therapist to turn off the TV because, after all, I hear enough random Chinese all day long and I wanted the massage to be relaxing). There were also other strange sounds. First, my massage therapist freely burped, coughed, and cleared his throat throughout the session. I'll admit, he was better than most men here, but it was still a little strange (although we're told that it is not considered offensive here to make such noises). Then there were the sounds of construction outside - a common noise in China. One notably absent sound was of calming music - there was none. In its place was the occasional beep from the blind man's watch indicating how much time he had left with me. Besides the sounds, there were the pajamas and towels my "VIP Room" was equipped with. Even though I was fully clothed, the therapist would place a small sheet between his hands and my clothes. The massage involved a lot of poking in strange places (like the middle of your calf), sending tingles down my spine. At times I thought I wouldn't be able to take anymore, but once it was over I felt extremely relaxed. The hour ended with a glass of very nice tea. It was a great experience! All this for a grand total of 7 US dollars! It really is a splurge here though. Upon our leaving the "health center", the "Welcome Woman" at the entrance snuck out her cell phone camera and began to snap a few shots of the waiguoren that had visited her place of work. I think we made their day as much as they made mine.

.After the massage, we had a late lunch at one of my favorite noodle shops. We've recently branched out to new shops that don't involve pictures of food, which means we have to rely on our not so fabulous conversational skills to order. This particular shop is run by a young woman. She makes fried noodles, which are like fried rice but with noodles, and they are fantastic! She also makes a flat breads that are about 1.5 feet in diameter and are to die for. We hope to frequent her shop enough in the coming months that we can have small conversations with her as our Chinese improves.

We kicked off the birthday evening by meeting up with the other foreign teachers at Zhuzhou's "Walking Street." Walking street is exactly what it sounds like -- a street for pedestrians and no cars. It has a fountain at one end and is lined with shops. It seems like it should be vibrant, but (in the winter, at least) the fountain is rarely turned on and the shops are uninhabited. In the summer, street vendors fill the walkways with their food carts and plastic tables and chairs, which makes for a lively outdoor dining experience. But now the cold weather is upon us and they have all gone elsewhere to do other jobs I suppose. This particular night we were heading to the only western restaurant in our city of 4 million people. It is an Italian restaurant that has been open for about 6 months, and by the looks of it, has prospects of staying open no more than another 3 months (I guess Chinese people generally aren't adventurous enough to try out other countries' cuisine, and there aren't enough foreigners in the city to support a western restaurant alone). The place is owned by an Italian man and his Chinese wife. Apparently the story is that the man came to visit China, accidentally got this woman pregnant, and decided/felt pressured to stay in China. We met him and the story is believable; he was rather obnoxious. The restaurant's atmosphere was nice - like an Italian restaurant! The prices were a bit high for us on volunteer stipends, but not ridiculous. And they had pizza that was quite good. I think the strangest part of being in this restaurant was that there were more foreigners there than we'd seen out in our city before (maybe 10 in addition to us?). The biggest group was a table of Canadian men in town for business. Apparently, one of ZhuZhou's many factories makes airplane engines, and they worked for the parent company. They were obnoxious as well, and it made me appreciate the well-meaning, only sometimes irritating, Chinese people I've been associating with. I'd take well-meaning over plain rude any day. But on the whole, the dinner was good and the company of my friends was even better. We had a great time!

Friends at an Italian dinner!!

After dinner was when the real party started. We headed to a roller skating rink that Dave and I had stumbled upon earlier that week. We had originally thought this would be such an "American night out" with Italian food and roller skating, but the skating rink was purely China. In fact, you could call it a microcosm of China itself. If you've been keeping up with the blogs then you know these fun facts about China:

-It is dirty.

-The roads are completely chaotic, with cars crossing lines and driving any direction they please.

- Everyone, everywhere is smoking.

- The locals are very touchy people, but only with the same sex.

- They are FASCINATED by foreigners.

- A local is always there to help anytime you are been lost or in need of direction, (and not just point us in a general direction, but literally walk/drive us all the way to our destination and possibly stay with us the rest of the day).

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So, we walked into the dark rollerskating rink. The walls were lined with Asian cartoon paintings of hot chicks in mini skirts, roller skates, and spiky hair. The rink was made of old, warped wood. The low ceiling was lined with neon lights. The aroma was distinctively Chinese bathroom and sweat (they really smell different than ours, maybe it's the food). There were tire swings in the corner and random English words posted allover the walls, like, "Fashion." But it gets even better. This was not just a roller skating rink. It was also a karaoke hang out. People were standing in the middle of the rink singing terrible Chinese songs, terribly. It was loud, just like the city. It was bright, just like the lit up buildings and bridges at night. It was stinky and dirty. There was a young man lying in a pool of his own vomit in one corner of the rink. The skaters were skating in all directions; it was very dangerous and resulted in many collisions. And just like in the city, no accident is official unless the involved parties stay in their position for a few minutes staring at each other and over-dramatizing the occurrence. No need to move out of the way. Just stay right where you are, causing more accidents behind you. (Really, they do this with cars too!) To top it all off, the teens were smoking while skating. I'm not sure if it was because this was my first time to see a group of teenagers outside of school, or if these were a particular type of teenager, but this setting screamed Asian stereotype. Bad haircuts, mismatched clothes from the 80's, extreme dance moves on the skating rink, and of course the skates themselves. It baffles me how nearly everyone in China has a cell phone yet they haven't discovered roller blades at the roller-skating rink!

Skating and smoking - That takes some talent!

We took in the sounds, sights, and smells and realized this would not be your usual skating experience. The rink was owned and managed by a family, as most small shops are here. The wife sold tickets at the front, the husband sold snacks, grandma took the tickets in exchange for skates, and the 5 year old son wandered around the dark rink and through the speakers and wires of the karaoke stage. After we stumbled our way through requesting skate sizes (and we cleared them out of all their largest sizes), we gingerly made it onto the rink, one by one. No sooner than I'd started to remember what skates felt like, a girl of no older than 15 grabbed my hand. She began to drag me alongside her, weaving in and out between groups of people. It couldn't have been as fast as it felt, but at that moment I would have sworn I was on a roller coaster ride. It was scary. I was sure to fall while turning a corner or by running into someone. But on the other hand, I was glad to have my Chinese "guide" because I sure couldn't move around the collisions or maneuver like she did. Once I looked up from my own two feet, I saw that each of the foreigners in our party had been picked up by a local as well. See, again, the locals come to our rescue! Some of the foreigners attracted long chains of girls. David was holding hands with a 15 year old boy, and they skated circle after circle for at least 30 minutes. They showed no fear of falling or crashing. Not because they were that good, but because falling and crashing were to be expected. The locals also loved holding hands in any situation. However, the culture in China is that girls hold girls' hands and boys hold boys' hands. It is perfectly acceptable for boys to hug, touch, and hold hands in China. I could tell David was out of his comfort zone here. After a dizzying hour or so, I reverted to holding hands with my foreign girl friends simply because I didn't want to appear "open" to hold hands with a stranger who might pick me up and go faster than I wanted. It also seemed odd to just skate with a complete stranger. We couldn't even talk. They were so happy to help us and be with us and I was just happy I was only involved in one major collision and none of us broke a bone. It may have been dirty, stinky, and dangerous, but it was also great fun and the patrons were all extremely friendly. If there is one generalization I feel safe to make, it is that the Chinese are unbelievably friendly and giving.

David wore his hat both to stay warm and block out some of the loud noise!

At the end of the night, we posed for some pictures with various teenagers (They were especially fascinated by the blonde in our group). Then, we headed out for the chilly walk home. The whole event made us think: We have been observing China for over 3 months and could have seen it all right there in the roller-skating rink for a whopping 75 US cents! The moral of this birthday story is this: 1) If you want to see China, just visit the roller-skating rink and 2) Don't get naked for a Chinese massage!

Say "eggplant!" (qiezi)

It's so nice to have good friends!