Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2009 3:54 AM
Subject: Day 6
We had to leave Shanghai early in the morning for the drive to Wuxi. Luckily, there is a Starbucks around the corner from our hotel and I was able to get my coffee fix. Coffee is not hard to find here, the portions are just small in most places. But at Starbucks, venti is still venti! In restaurants, the waitress will invariably full my coffee cup only half-way. No idea why. The drive to Wuxi was typical, heavy traffic, no consideration given to lane markers, turn signals are used but they are in no way to be interpreted as asking permission to merge – they are just a warning that “I am coming over and you had better make room”. I find it best to just concentrate on something else…
I suppose you may be tempted to think I am making up some of the things they feed me here, but I assure you my imagination is not that active. Today, we took our Wuxi plant managers and a customer out to the typical Chinese lunch restaurant and Larry ordered (I should probably let someone else do this). Some of today’s finer menu items included eel (rather large strips with hard spiny edges which you are supposed to spit out onto your plate), stewed pork rind (including a healthy layer of fat in case the rind wasn’t unhealthy enough for you), shrimp with the head, legs, and shell still attached (they eat the whole thing shell and all, minus the head thankfully), and I am not making this up – pig ears! He fed us pig ears! Now if you are thinking pig ears are mostly cartilage and are probably chewy and flavorless, you would be absolutely correct. Even the weirder things they have fed me here in reality tasted OK, but this was just a “what was the point of eating that” kind of experience.
By and large, hotel prices in China are pretty reasonable. The hotel in Wuxi is far and away the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in anywhere and cost a little over $65 – an unusually good bargain and one I will no doubt remember next time I spend $90 at a crappy Days Inn. This room would have cost easily $350 per night in Chicago, probably more. Attached is a picture of the room and of course, the view out the window. I was on the 49th floor. I have no idea how tall the hotel is because I could never see the top (low clouds and heavy air pollution) and the elevators do not have buttons with the floor numbers on them – you key in your floor number and wave your room key card past a sensor and the elevator automatically takes you to your floor.
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| Wuxi hotel room |
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| What a view! |
On my last trip to China, Larry talked me into getting a Chinese foot massage, but time was short and I missed the opportunity – not so this time. Kevin was wary but agreed to get one too. We took a 5 minute taxi ride from the hotel to a fairly quiet street, 3-4 story connected buildings lining both sides of the street with small shops or restaurants on the first floor and apartments above, pretty typical. The massage place had an entrance on the first floor but really occupied the second floor of the building. A winding stair case led us to a narrow hallway upstairs with doors lining both sides, behind which were private rooms. The place seemed pretty seedy, everything was worn and tacky looking, no one spoke any English and I was beginning to get concerned – perhaps Larry misunderstood and thought I wanted to go to one of those massage places. I started to relax when I saw that our room contained three overstuffed chairs with cushioned ottomans and a television in the corner – I figured the other kind of massage would likely offer more privacy. We each sat back in a chair and after a few minutes, two young girls entered the room, they looked to be in their teens, but it is really hard to say. The girls were each carrying a large wooden pail filled with steaming water, which were placed at Kevin and my feet. The girls then proceeded to remove our shoes and socks, and placed our feet in the water, which by the way was hot to the point of being quite uncomfortable. The girls left us to soak for a few minutes. I asked Larry what was going on, why was he not having his feet poached, to which he replied “I do not like the foot massage – too much hurting”. “Oh no Larry”, I told him. “You talked me into this, you are going to get one too!” After a few minutes he relented and a third girl came with his bucket.
When our girls returned, they left our feet soaking and began massaging our arms – I guess a foot massage covers more than just feet. My girl could not have been older than 20 and maybe weighed 100 pounds, but holy $#!^ was she strong! Using her knuckles, thumbs and occasionally elbows she beat the crap out of both arms until I was sure I was going to leave there with massive bruises. She performed the same on my hands, at one point yanking hard on each finger releasing three distinct pops from each one. Once my arms and hands were fully tenderized, she had me stand and turn around to face the chair (both feet still in a bucket of water mind you), and sat me on the ottoman, leaning forward with my arms on the chair cushion. I could not see, but I am fairly sure she was massaging by back with a baseball bat. At one point, she put her knee into my lower back, grabbed my arms and pulled back, trying to bend my spine in half I guess. By the time she was done ravaging my neck I think I was close to losing consciousness. She sat me back in the chair, removed my feet from the pail, dried them, put some oil on her hands and started rubbing my feet, gently at first like she was looking for something. Then she gave me a little smile, made a tight fist, and dug her knuckles into the ball of my left foot until I thought I would scream. She must have seen me wincing and said something in Mandarin which Larry translated as “Too hard?” Naturally, not wanting to admit that this 90 pound girl was kicking my ass, I said it was just fine – probably not the smartest approach because that turned out to be her cue to go harder. I was fairly sure I would never walk again.
Kevin and Larry were not any better off as both were letting our muffled groans. The girls thought this was most amusing. They joked with each other continually – I don’t think they get foreigners in this place very often so we were apparently a novelty.
After both feet were fully mauled, the turned her more sadistic tendencies on my thighs and calves. I should probably point out that I have never had any kind of massage before, but I seriously doubt that thighs are normally massaged by leaning an elbow deep into the muscle and making rotary motions, all while fully clothed by the way. By this time I was becoming numb to the pain – endorphins I guess.
After a full 90 minutes of pounding, prodding, slapping, and poking, she returned to my feet, rubbed some lotion on them, put my socks and shoes back on, smiled and left the room, as did Kevin’s and Larry’s girls. The massage was over. In case you think I am embellishing, I probably am a bit – I always knew I could learn to walk again someday, but this truly was intensely painful. Strangely though, when I stood up, I felt great. My feet haven’t felt this good in years. Perhaps this little Chinese Eva Braun has uncovered some masochistic tendency I was not aware of, but I will do this again – it really felt great when she was done. On a similar note, I think if you put this girl into a WWF tournament she would likely come out on top.
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