massage-e… OK!
September 21st, 2004 stevel
poorna and i finally broke down and got massages.
.
.
by blind people. 
massage-e OKAY!
(read my Qingdao entry if you haven’t yet).
I forgot to mention this in my earlier weekend blog, but on Sunday, we attempted to get “traditional Chinese blind person massage”. We hailed a taxi, showed him the address we wanted to go to, and asked him if he knew where it was. He kept nodding and saying yes, he knew, so we hopped in and off we went.
We got a little suspicious though when we arrived in the district, and he hopped out of the car to ask someone for directions. We thought about what to do, with Poorna suggesting we get out of the car and run. As tempting as it was, we decided to stay.
When he got out for the second time to ask for directions we decided this was ridiculous, and got out of the cab. We then wandered up and down the street looking for “#1 Pufong Lu”. We were on Pufong Lu already, so we reasoned that it shouldn’t be that hard to find #1…. until we realised none of the storefronts have freaking street numbers.
I don’t know how these people get their mail.
[sigh]. We wandered around for about 40 minutes looking for the place until we finally found it. Anyway, the massage was great…80 yuan ($10) for an hour. My lower back feels much better now.
I wonder what it is about blind people and massages? Are they traditionally made masseuses because their remaining senses are heightened? Or is it just because it’s a job where they don’t really need sight? i.e.: does the man make the job? or does the job make the man?
tangential note: I suspect my masseuse wasn’t really blind…. but I thought it might be rude of me to ask, “are you really blind?” 
[tags: ChinaBlog]
1 Comment Add your own
-
1.
Richard Friedman | September 21st, 2004 at 11:58
Maybe Chinese men are sensitive to being seen with their clothes off, so a blind masseuse would be a good marketing ploy. E.g. we don’t care what you look like (as long as you don’t smell bad).
I’m really enjoying these China Experiences, btw. Keep it coming.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
