Pain? No Problem.

Did you miss me? I missed you. And now, without further ado, my Saturday night!

I am going to skip over most of my day. For personal reasons, mostly relating to the fact that I don't want you to know just how pathetically boring my day was, and just how much of an uninteresting person I really am. So, skip ahead to about 7 at night. Since I have skipped most of my day, let me set the stage. If you have been the Beijing, imagine a typical Beijing night, with people crowding the streets. If you haven't been to Beijing, then let me help you paint a picture. Start with a blank canvass. Now imagine a wide street, masses of cars, hundreds of Chinese people, bikes, and couples walking around under umbrellas. Now add some trash onto the street, and some huge buildings made of glass and steel. And the finishing touch? Come on, you know this one. Smog! That's right, take your beautiful picture, and now mess it up by putting copious amounts of smog into it. And that my friends, in China in a nutshell, and the stage for my adventure last night.

As a way to bring ourselves back to sanity, my new found friend Grace and I decided to have a girls night on the town, which basically included getting dinner and massage. What more could you want? We decided to go to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. I know, horror of horrors, going to a Japanese restaurant in China. But seriously. I wanted lamb shishkabobs (or however you spell it - also known as 羊肉串) and miso soup. And yes, we did keep speaking Chinese. We aren't THAT white.

Dinner was satisfactory. Needless to say, I doubt it possible to find stellar Japanese food in China. But forget about that. Now we are getting to the actual story that I wanted to tell you. The massage.

China massages are amazing. These little Chinese women might look slight, but believe me when I say that they are amazingly strong when it comes to massages. I was in pain a couple of times. I had a woman give me a massage last night, and she was as strong as any man I have ever met. My friend had a guy giving her a massage, but I didn't ask how it was going (NO SHE WAS NOT GETTING A HAPPY ENDING. My god, get your head out of the gutter.) They were such nice people. For the entire hour that we were getting a massage (full body massage, 1 hour, $10.01. And that is how it is done in China) we just chatted. They kept asking us if we had boyfriends, and then telling us that we needed to get Chinese boyfriends (and yes, both of us needed more than one each) because they would cook for us. I will never get used to China.

They couldn't speak English, but I felt like overall, our Chinese definitely held up. Fun was had by all. We just chatted about every thing for an hour. Then my lady dropped the bomb: did we want to get cupping done? How about scrapping?

I don't know if you know what those things are, so let me digress for a second a describe it to you. Both are forms of Chinese medicine, aimed at getting rid of the trash in your body, and making you more healthy. Cupping basically involves suctioning glass jars onto your back, and then leaving them there for 10 minutes. They put a piece of cloth dipped in alcohol into the jar, light it on fire to suck the air out, and then suction it onto your back. I had over 10 of them put onto my back. The result? Huge, octopus looking bruises all over your back.

Scraping is just as fun. They rub oil all over your back, as lubrication I guess, and then literally take a scraper, and start scraping the top layer of skin off your back. Sounds comfortable, doesn't it? IT'S NOT. It hurt like a kick in the head. I kept saying that it hurt. Her response? "You'll be fine. I'm not using any pressure. The guy that came in before you, I was using a lot of pressure. Like THIS (at which point she used pressure. OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH) And he was fine. I have a lot of people that come in once a month to get this done. You just aren't used to it. It's almost over." That is some great encouragement, right there. Read between the lines: suck it up white girl!

That lasted for 10 minutes. I was ready to get up and leave right then. (Grace, who was watching this, said that when she was done, I had a huge red line right down my back bone. I can only imagine what it looked like. I'm surprised she stayed.) So picture that. Now, guess what was next? If you guessed cupping, you would be right. My torturer (as she will hence forth be known) grabbed 16 of those glass jars, and started suctioning them on to my back, and then left them there for 10 minutes. It actually doesn't hurt as much as you think it would, it just feels super weird, because your skin is being sucked up. It hurts if you laugh though. I was more than ready to have them off by the end of 10 minutes though. The whole time, I kept asking, how much longer, how much longer?

My person was super cute though. She kept saying that she cried the first time she got this done to her, so she was impressed that I wasn't crying. (It didn't hurt THAT much.) She said "You can clearly withstand pain. You didn't complain during the massage, and now you are doing this." My response? "I can't handle pain, I am just really really stupid." That got a laugh out of everyone in the room. I could already feel the bruising by the time I put my shirt back on though. And after I paid for all of it and looked in the mirror, I saw HUGE, octopus sucker like bruises, all over my back, in addition to the scrapping bruising that was covering my back. I also saw the huge red line that was down my back.

The only thing that I can liken it to, if you haven't seen it before, is that I would imagine someone who has just been dragged for a mile behind a bus would probably have a back that looks something like mine right now. Oh, the colors. One huge bruise, from my neck to my butt. I keep telling myself that it is an experience that I needed to have. I'm in China, I should do that at least once. It's not going to stop me from sleeping on my stomach tonight though.


Dinner: $5.15
Massage, scraping, and cupping: $18.23
Story of why I looked like I was subjected to domestic violence? Priceless

As always, questions and comments!