Shenzhen: Mainland, Tailor, Massage

My mother wants me to tell you all about how I got my boobs rubbed in a spa in Shenzen. It is shocking to me too!! Both that I have such a story, and that my mother would like me to publish it on the Internet so she can tell it to all of her close family and friends. I don’t know about your family, but in mine, Mama gets what Mama wants…. even if it is mortifyingly embarrassing to her offspring. But the writer in me tends to agree that this story is too good to go untold.  And so I will tell it (for you Mom) in more detail than I usually do.

The purpose of a trip to Shenzhen is threefold: 1. You get to go to “mainland China,” via the subway 2. You can go to a tailor and have cheap custom clothing made 3. Massages!

Now I was able to do all three of these things.

#1.The ride to mainland China via the subway was fairly uneventful except for the following two things:

I almost starved to death on the hour ride there because you are not allowed eat or drink on the subway. As a foreigner, I don’t want to be deported or, worse thrown into Chinese jail and forced to become a Communist, so I follow the letter of the law. Well, at least until I couldn’t take it anymore, and with a “I live here it’s fine” endorsement from my HK Friend I subtly shoveled a couple of rolls into my mouth while trying to stifle the noise of a crinkly bag. I didn’t dare open the bottle of water I brought for fear of spilling. You can’t hide a spill. Crumbs maybe, spill definitely not.

The other thing that happened was the surprising need for me to defend my decision to go to business school. My HK friend, the leader of our little Shenzhen expedition, brought his neighbor along, who I will call Mean Guy. Mean Guy was quite the opposite of HK Friend, he was… mean.  It was a sad meanness stemming from a deep-seated insecurity about not finishing college and not having an MBA. And to make himself feel less intimidated by the three MBAs on the trip he proceeded to berate us for our decision to spend thousands of dollars on an empty education. Why would we do that when we could just do what he was doing and start a real business. Suffice it to say that I didn’t make the situation any better when I offered the fact that MBAs have a higher success rate in entrepreneurship than those without business degrees. (Take that, Mean Guy!)

#2. Going to a tailor to get custom clothing was quite an experience.  Things of note:

You literally can bring in a picture of an item and get a tailor to replicate it. You can even go pick the fabric from the fabric “market.”  They will take your measurements right on the spot. Interestingly, my measurements were the same as my petite Chinese American Friend. Now unless I magically dropped 20 lbs from starving myself on the subway ride, I’m not quite sure the measurements were accurate. Which brings me to the gamble of the custom made clothing. For some reason I thought they would take the picture of the dress and jacket I had picked out and attach it to my file for reference for the seamstress. Oh, no. The sales girl simply drew (and she obviously didn’t have an MFA) the jacket and dress on to the receipt with instructions. Now, this made me slightly wary because how will they know what I am looking for if they don’t ever look at what I picked out. But when in Rome… Here’s hoping my clothes come back looking like what I had chosen, and actually fitting the medium height African American woman that I am.

#3. Now on to the spa….

Ah, the spa…. This ain’t your haughty-taughty spa where you eat cucumbers sandwiches and chant Ohm.  The best way I can describe this place is a lazy-Saturday-afternoon resort.  We changed into “pajamas” and left our cares and cell phones in our lockers. The spa had 5 floors of relaxation options (think office building floors). There were hundreds of lazy-boy recliner chairs with personal TVs, blankets, and service buttons. You could have food brought to your own lazy-boy island. You didn’t have to move for anything.  If you wanted a head massage or a pedicure, they came to you! There were movies, internet, MTV, and all sorts of Chinese language television to be had. In fact, I’m thinking this might be what heaven is like:  one leather recliner with a service button. Oh, and there was free ice cream! There was also free fruit, but there was FREE ICE CREAM! And later you could go to the restaurant and have dinner… while wearing your pajamas!!! You could even stay for 24 hours straight, more if you wanted. For those of you who don’t believe in heaven on earth: http://www.queenspa.cn/en/queen_en.html .

Now when we first arrived at the spa, we had no idea what a large magnificent place it was. And the three MBAs had to split up according to gender to get massages. The two ladies, and among them the only Mandarin speaker, went to left, and the guy was on his own. Our parting words, “we’ll find each other in what, two hours?” This was at 3:30pm.  We did not leave the spa until 10:00pm. What did we do for all that time? Well, the ladies got a massage among other things.

The massage started out as all massages do with a quick room relocation because of a cockroach spotting.  (“No biggie” is the newly minted attitude of Hong Kong Carr. I can get massages where cockroaches live no problem at all… L ).

Once settled into our new (hopefully cockroach free) room my Chinese American Friend and I were instructed to strip and get under the sheets by the two masseuses who were doing our side-by-side massages. Like good little Americans we kindly waited for the masseuses to exit so that we could have some privacy. However, they just stared us down until my CAF asked in Mandarin if they could at least dim the lights (geeze!). We turned our backs, closed our eyes and pretended we had all the privacy in the world as we jumped under the covers.

Now I have had a total of two massages prior to this experience. So I am by no means an expert, but they generally do the same routine. Rub your limbs, your back, and maybe your neck/head. Usually in that order. The room is usually dark and filled with some “relaxation” music allowing you to drift off into a calm and peaceful state.  Well, there was no relaxation here. The two massuses wouldn’t let my friend have a moment of peace. They kept peppering her with questions about the US and the room had a constant Mandarin buzz for 90 minutes.  

The chatting really took off around the time we got to the head massage.  I will admit that I wasn’t having the best hair day (I could devote an entire post to the woes of humidity in Hong Kong), but I didn’t think it was that bad until my friend informed me that my masseuse thought my hair was fake.   So like any good racial ambassador I volunteered  “she can touch it if she wants.”  And I lifted my head and yanked on my hair to show her it was real. Then she yanked on a little piece hair and the other masseuse ran over and yanked on a little piece and we all yanked and laughed and yanked and laughed (‘cuz what else are you going to do in that situation?).

As my friend kindly translated during the massage, I found out that I continued to occasionally be the topic of conversation. My friend learned that the masseuses normally felt like foreigners had a funny smell, but according to them, I didn’t have that smell (thank goodness). It was also revealed that I had a very light complexion for being African American. And finally, there was the issue with my rubbing oil running out, which apparently is only an issue if you are a Chinese customer because they don’t make foreigners pay for refills. And I think I know why. Because if they had asked me to pay for oil in the middle of my massage I would have pitched a fit and in that state it would have been a half naked fit and no one wants to see that.

At the massage midway point we flipped on to our tummies and a few minutes in, my friend nervously translated “I think they are going to massage our boobs.”

“Oh, yeah, one of my friends lived in Taiwan and she said they did that,” was my half asleep, but very culturally aware reply.

“Well, what do we do?” came my friend’s voice an octave higher.

“Ohhh, well, I mean, I don’t know…” I started to put the pieces together of what was really happening. And then I was caught between wanting to be Hong Kong Carr, someone who could be comfortable with all types of cultural experiences, and regular VCarr who doesn’t want her boobs touched by some random masseuse in China! I decided it couldn’t really be that bad. “It’s probably like getting a breast exam at the doctor,” I said. “We’ve done that.”

“OK, close your eyes,” said my friend.

“Um, I’m not opening my eyes again until this is all over, maybe never ,” was my reply.  And before I knew it the masseuse had pulled down the sheet and was sweeping over my chest in circles. And then she started laughing. “What is she saying?” I asked because no one wants their boobs laughed at.

“Your masseuse says your boobs are huge and they feel like big rubber balls,” my friend kindly translated. And we all laughed, because what else are you going to do? I mean, the Chinese are not known for having large chested women, so I’m sure this was just as new to my masseuse as it was to me and my friend.

And then the laughing stopped and the swooshing stopped. Mandarin chattering started again. And the other masseuse came over. And my friend started talking.

“Umm,” said my friend. “Your masseuse thinks she feels something hard.”

“WHAT?!?” was my response. And I look up and the masseuse is pointing and I’m pointing. “She is diagnosing me with breast cancer in the middle of a massage in the middle of China!?!”

“She says you should get that checked out.”

And I just started laughing and laughing. “Thank God I am a bit of a hypochondriac and I’ve already had it check out. The doctor actually told me they are just “lumpy." It’s fine.”

And with the medical situation resolved the massage ended shortly there after. The masseuses handed us back our clothing and left so that we could get dressed in peace.

So all in all, I survived the massage, and we spent the rest of our time lazing around the spa looking for our guy MBA who had been waiting for us for 3 hours (bless him). I guess boob massages take longer than regular ones.

(Happy now, Mom?  I haven't had anyone read this over so it could be horribly funny or just plain horrible. But we all know that Moms don't believe their children do anything horribly. J )