In Cambridge, John and I are very self-reliant. We clean the house ourselves and cut each other's hair. When our bikes break, John fixes them, and actually he does a lot of car repair too. When clothing needs mending or hemming, I do it. We have done all the interior painting in our house as well as heck of a lot of exterior painting ourselves. The one service I regularly enjoy, an incredible luxury if you consider my small part-time salary, is seeing my massage therapist, Randy, every two or three weeks.
In China, we are cosseted by a pantheon of service providers. I have already described our housekeeper, Hesao, but she is by no means alone. I have a massage therapist here as well, and also a young woman who gives me facials and upper body massage every two weeks. We have a bike parking attendant and a regular bike repairman. I also have an active relationship with a pair of sister seamstresses who do everything from sewing custom clothing for me to replacing broken zippers. One reason we have relationships with all these people is because labor is dirt cheap in China and no one does anything they can afford to have someone else do. The other is because when I find someone whose work I like, I tell them so and stick with them. I am acutely aware that these service providers, with the possible exception of my massage therapist, occupy a completely different rung of China's economic ladder than we and our academic friends do. For this among other reasons, I am very interested in them.
As we have mentioned before, our immediate neighborhood is modest. If you exclude the students, it's safe to say that the working class and poor significantly outnumber the middle class and affluent. However, on the other side of the main street leading downtown is a collection of several very upscale condo complexes as well as the kind of services and shops those well-heeled residents require. It's in that neighborhood, Jiayuan, that I go to for massages and facials.
Dr. Zhang is the head of a small clinic in Jiayuan providing an array of traditional Chinese medical treatments. After being dissatisfied with the inexpensive stool-on-the- sidewalk massages offered by several blind people in the neighborhood, I wandered into the clinic on a slow morning and had the good fortune to be treated by Dr. Zhang himself.
The massage therapists there all are sighted and wear white jackets. Unlike in America, the clients all wear clothes. In fact, I am not only fully clothed, but also covered with at least a heavy terrycloth beach towel, if not an actual blanket, so I'm warm. I lay on a regular massage table with linens that appear clean enough, but are certainly not changed after every patient. The technique is very different from any massage I've had in America, but truly excellent. There is a lot of rubbing, some shaking and less of what you might consider acupressure.
Dr. Zhang appears to be rather casual about his work. When I sneak a peek at him, he is often gazing out the window while he rubs my abdomen or legs. Sometimes he chats with another masseuse, supervises the treatment of adjacent patients, and occasionally takes calls on his cell phone. This is so unlike the exquisite concentration of my American massage therapist that I was initially a little put off, but then I realized that he *was* lingering on the tense areas; he was paying attention, and whatever he does is extremely effective.
It's a good thing all the patients are clothed because there is no such thing as privacy in this clinic. There are three beds in each room, plus several stools for waiting patients. While I am getting massaged, I watch other patients get treated with all kinds of other methods, and the great thing about China is that nosiness is no problem. I ask about everything I see going on. Once when Dr. Zhang was doing my neck, the next client offered to hold my hair for him. It seemed so Chinese for everyone to get involved, but maybe it was just an excuse for her to finger foreign curls. The staff tells me I'm the only foreigner who gets treated there, so especially for the younger ones, I am an incredible novelty. They pump me with questions about American life and fantasize about how rich they would get as American masseuses.
As a regular patient, I pay 30 yuan--just under US$4--for an hour-long full-body massage. (I should point out that 30 yuan is not trivial in China. It buys an acceptable dinner for four, albeit without beer.) As a foreigner, I also have an unexpected benefit: while I wait for Dr. Zhang--and I do because there is no such thing as an appointment for medical treatment in China--the younger staff always offer to start the massage. At first I resisted since it's clear that Dr. Zhang is the real master there, but then I discovered that the junior massages are free. Now I always get an extra half hour or so by the younger staff on top of the hour with Dr. Zhang, and he's a guy who doesn't watch the clock. I hardly ever get out of there in less than two hours.
Across the street from the clinic is a skin care salon. This initially struck me as unnecessarily frivolous, but ZXY treated me the first time and then I was sold. Now ZXY, Nancy and I go together every other Saturday morning to have our faces, necks, hands, and arms washed, creamed, masked, and massaged for two hours. With my frequent customer card, it costs 24 yuan (US$3). During this time, my middle-aged skin is extravagantly praised for its whiteness and I leave feeling like a movie star, a very serene one.
ZXY doesn't care which salon worker does her and Nancy likes to have the manager do her, but I insist on Guo Ping. I must admit, for the first few months, I thought of the salon workers as girls. Then I learned that Guo Ping is the divorced mother of a six year old. In China, women don't get married very young, so by my reckoning, at a minimum, she's got to be approaching 30. It seems her husband took up with one of his female colleagues and she fled from her hometown to Kunming in humiliation, leaving her daughter with her better paid ex. She wistfully showed me photos of her standing with her daughter on her annual visit to her hometown.
I don't know what Guo Ping's ex does for a living, but it wouldn't be hard to make more money than she does. The salon workers earn 10 yuan ($1.25) a day regardless of how many facials they do. There are no paid sick days or vacations, but they do make a small commission on any of the absurdly expensive skin care products they sell; the day I learned this I agreed to buy eye cream. I considered it a charitable donation rather than an extravagant purchase.
Next week: Part 2.
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