The Other Kind of China Moment

When the boss’s wife comes to town and insists that you join her for an hour long foot massage at her favorite spa chain, how can you say no?

In a store front right around the corner from the East Gate of the Forbidden City, the small waiting room of The Dragonfly Therapeutic Retreat was well decorated, with the requisite sounds of gurgling water and new age music.

The similarity to spas at home ended there. The three of us (the boss's wife, her visiting friend, and me) were ushered through a curtain, stepping up onto a kind of raised boardwalk that led through a dim hallway lit by tea candles and jack-o-lanterns. (It was Halloween, after all, and this spa caters to westerners. No hack jobs here: the pumpkins were beautifully carved.) The room we were ushered into was so dark I couldn’t tell if there was a step down into the room. The three young men attending quickly saw the problem and raised the lights just enough to see the ramp by.

The room was small, just big enough for three plush, fabric-covered recliners, ottomans, and a small fountain. The recliners had small down-filled pillows for the lower back, which the men plumped before we settled in. The men left the room, re-dimmng the lights as they went, and we removed our shoes and socks in the near-dark.

A moment later they returned, carrying heavy wooden buckets, lined with plastic. (I was relieved to see this nod to hygiene.) After rolling our pants legs up over our knees (how do they do that without touching your skin?), they placed our feet in the buckets and agitated the hot-but-not-too-hot water with their hands. To allow time for the feet to soak, they came around behind our chairs and gave a neck and shoulder massage. Despite the awkward angle (for the masseurs), they managed to make this relaxing.

Finally, choreographed and in sync, all three men walked around to the front of our chairs and situated themselves at our feet. For a good ten minutes or so, they focused on the soles. . . working pressure points I could feel all the way up my back and down to my finger tips. He massaged parts of my feet I forgot all about, between the toes, even the tips of the toes. They massaged our calves front and back. Then back to the feet again, stretching the ankles and the toe joints.

An hour later, our feet and legs toweled dry, our socks delicately replaced, perched still and relaxed in those big comfy chairs in a dark room, massaged all away are the memories of the grit, the polyglot noise, the outrageous traffic, the inability to communicate, leaving just one thought in their place:

I love China.