Monthly Archives: February 2012

The cold turkey of a Chinese massage junkie

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Standing in a room in a basement in Shepherd’s Bush this week stripping in front of a stranger, I thought “Hmm, I wouldn’t have done this before I went to China”.

 

It’s not that I have fallen down on my luck or chosen to supplement my income.

 

It was all in the name of finding a good massage.

 

I lamented with an NLE (Never Left England) friend recently that you cannot find a decent, good value massage parlour in London and he stared blankly at me, before his jaw sank and he wore the ‘You’ve changed’ expression that is becoming familiar.

“At one point I looked behind to see that my guy with his elbow in my shoulder blade had a mobile phone in his hand that he was straining to look at”

 

But the fact is that cushy expat lifestyles in China revolve around pampering and massage.

 

I’m not ashamed to say I went for a massage most weeks and once on a particularly stressful day went for a foot massage in my lunch break. I’ve been slathered in oil and cupped. I’ve been covered in seaweed, sanded down and massaged by a blind man. But generally, I was put in a pair of oriental pyjamas so I looked like something from The Mikado, and then pushed and prodded all over for an hour. A full body Chinese massage cost £8.

The 'Mute's Gate' to 'Wind Mansion' needs opening my Traditional Chinese Medicine instinct tells me

One of the few low points came when my friend and I found that our favourite place was full and we dashed to another, untested establishment looking for a hit. The smell of sandalwood and jasmine made us hopeful, the soothing pipe music even more so. But a short while after we lay down side by side and two young guys walked in, we heard them discussing our bodies to each other in Mandarin. At one point I looked behind to see that my guy with his elbow in my shoulder blade had a mobile phone in his hand that he was straining to look at.

 

But over time, I became hooked on massages.

 

And to cope with life back in London after four years in Shanghai I need to find somewhere I can go to re-up.

 

Ideally I’m looking for a Chinese lady who isn’t afraid to use her elbow on my spine and doesn’t shy away from cracking my neck – the one, two, three, jerk move that looks like it might be used to kill a turkey but releases a rush of endorphins.

 

I need someone who can dig her thumbs into the back of my head, will hit me on the head with the bottom of a clenched fist and forcibly separate my vertebrae. And hell, I’ll take an eyebrow stroke and earlobe tickle for good measure if it’s going. Is it really too much to ask?

 

Trying Times

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Life at the age of 32 seems to revolve around who’s trying, who’s tried, who’s succeeded and who’s failed. It’s all pretty trying in itself for a single girl, even more so as such talk is often accompanied by martyr-like sobriety.

 

When a British girl refuses a drink there’s only one explanation, and it isn’t antibiotics or Weight Watchers. 

So while three months ago I moved countries- from China to Britain- it feels at the moment as if I swapped planets.

When I used to meet up with girlfriends for dinner four years ago before I left, we would put the world to rights over a bottle or two talking about things that made our waiter blush. Talk was about who was doing what, how often and with whom, with a side serving of career ambition and holiday gossip.

 

Now, they nurse glasses of water, talk in weeks and speak of flexi-time and career breaks. It feels like a seismic shift.

 

But why? It isn’t as if I don’t have friends in Shanghai with children. But the difference is that in my expat life I had a range of friends of all ages- an assortment of people from 18-year-old students to high-powered executives in their 40s who I could have fun with. We all had in common the fact that we were living abroad and having the time of our lives.

 

“What do you miss most about China?” is something I am being asked quite often. And, if I’m honest it’s not so much the great standard of living or the satisfaction of living in a country that’s an international success story, it’s the unique group of friends I had of different ages and races who I got to see on a weekly basis.

 

In Shanghai it was much easier to meet with people. The same people tended to go the same places and enjoy being a big gang. It was also much more convenient to travel in the city and most people could afford to live centrally. On top of that, most of my friends were connected with the rugby club. In the early days we would throw barbecues that 40 people came to with one night’s notice. In London, the style is to meet small pockets of people separately and have meetings scheduled in weeks beforehand. People rarely stray out of their groups and a week’s notice for an event suddenly seems spontaneous.

 

It’s a big social adjustment that I’m encountering, swapping pints for pregnancy tests, nightclubs for nurseries and boat races for breast pumps.

 

Still, I’ve learnt more about the female anatomy in the last few weeks than I ever thought I could.