Shoulders of Stone and a Chinese Treatment

I was on a business trip to China with my brother and we had spent the day touring an electronics factory. The factory managers, who had never met my brother before, were a  nervous. Business customs required them to entertain this foreign visitor.

But he has his sister with him.

Normally, they’d take the guest to a bar and all get rip roaring drunk. They didn’t particularly enjoy those outings, because that made it tough to get up for work in the morning.

But this guy had his sister with him and she didn’t look the part.

What to do?

The three engineers joined us for dinner at the hotel. One brought his pretty wife. We tried to share stories about our lives: all four Chinese hosts were startled my brother and I both had four children. I had photos, everyone else used their cell phone to display family pictures.

After dinner, they loaded us into a van and drove through dark streets, narrowly missing bicycle riders whose bike lamps were out. (“It’s because they worry the battery will lose its charge,” sighed one engineer. “Of course not using the battery is the worst thing they could do.”). The van squeezed into a small parking area in front of a neon-lit club.

I followed along, having no idea what was happening, past the gambling scenes and up a swirling flight of stairs into a small room crowded with seven beds. They indicated I should sit down.

My brother “you are two meters tall, Glenn,” raised his eyebrows at me and grinned. He sprawled across the first bed.

I sit gingerly on the edge of the second, my knees pressed tight together and wondered what we had gotten into. What did Glenn know about these people anyway? He’d found them on the Internet.

The three engineers and the wife entered, giggling, lounged on the other beds and someone closed the door. They chatted in Chinese and I looked about the darkened room, holding my hands as still as possible.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen, do you?”Glenn smirked.

I may be only 1. 5 meters tall, but I am the older sister. I sat up straight. “I’m sure you’ll protect me no matter what.”

He laughed.

Seven small Chinese women dressed in pink smocks over white shirts and slacks entered carrying identical buckets. They knelt before each of us and indicated we should take off our shoes.

“Mrs. Michelle, you know this?” the chief engineer asked.

Mystified, I shook my head and took off my shoes and socks. The small woman kneeling before me slipped my feet into her bucket of warm water and within minutes, I leaned back to savor a lovely foot massage.

Perfect after a long flight from California.

Everyone in the room except me chatted (Two meters tall Glenn speaks a little Chinese) and I finally relaxed.

Had I ever had a massage before?

“Once, after I finished writing a book.” I indicated my shoulders. “They get very sore.”

After a flurry of discussion, the tiny foot masseuse indicated I should get up. She stood on the bed and began to knead my shoulders.

She said something and everyone laughed.

“Mrs. Michelle, she says you have shoulders like stone.”

She spoke the truth–I’ve since learned that women carry tension in their shoulders and I certainly was tense that night!

But the tiny woman’s strong hands relaxed the sore muscles in my shoulders and when the evening was done, my brother and I were more than glad to have missed a night of alcohol (as were our hosts).

A massage was a much better way to entertain western guests–and boy, did we sleep well that night!

Have you ever had a massage in a foreign country? What was that like?