China Interwang Debris, the China news and links section of our blog, will be up and running again shortly. I just need to go borrow one of my friends’ VPN and recover the news feeds from my Bloglines account, which is blocked in China.

Pronounced: gér (gén + ér)
Means: funny, fun, cute, amusing, comical (for people or situations). The adjective of choice among the Tianjiners we overhear commenting on Lilia, our 5-month-old daughter, and foreign babies in general: “So 哏儿啊！Foreign dolls are all so 哏儿啊！”

I love going to the public bathhouse (大众浴池) and relaxing in a big tub chatting about whatever with whoever over some some cold drinks, getting guāshā‘d (刮痧) and firecupped (拔罐儿) just for the experience. It’s a cheap (30 kuài total = $4.60 CDN) and fun evening. But unfortunately — if our experience last night at the “Shared Happiness Bathing Garden” (同福浴園) is any indication — darker aspects of Tianjin society sometimes find you even when you aren’t looking for them. Foreigners with taxi Chinese, be ye warned. One of our language student American friends accidentally found himself in a rather awkward situation last night that would’ve been really funny had it not involved sexually exploited women.

Sexual exploitation of women is more common and widely available than many lǎowài (老外) realize. Of course we know most of the more obvious clues: red lights strung outside a foot massage place, a ‘hair salon’ window full of skimpily dressed young women, a vaguely worded and conspicuously expensive service listed among the usual bathhouse offerings… But we can’t read all the signs, we don’t pick up on the more subtle publicly visible cues, and we don’t come pre-equipped with the intuition and knowledge of cultural insiders.

The truth is — and this is consistent with what we’ve been told all along — when it comes to bathhouses, massage parlours, karaoke bars and hair salons in China, there are generally two kinds. The first kind are just fronts for brothel-type businesses; they have obvious indicators like the ones I just mentioned and you wouldn’t go there if all you wanted was a mundane hair cut. The second kind really are actual bathhouses, hair salons, etc.; their main business is their stated business, but sexual services are often (not always) available for those who want them and know how to ask. And it doesn’t require a great deal of tact or secret handshaking to ask; foreigners’ taxi Chinese is more than adequate. In China, money-and-status rules, especially over the millions of unprivileged and unempowered.

Last night six of us went for a soak after dinner. For two language students it was their first time. The hot tubs, guasha/soap-down tables and showers are in one big room of naked men only, while the massage beds and TV are in another room where some of the attendants are women (young and old) and everyone wears clothes. We figured we’d soak for a while, do guasha or whatever, shower off, and then go get firecupped in the other room like we had in the past.

One guy, a language student who was there for the first time, left us in the hot tubs and headed alone to the other room, thinking he’d get a cheap, quick back rub from the same kind of forty-something-year-old guy who does the firecupping. Instead of giving him what he wanted, the male attendants tried to convince him to go into a back room for some sort of activity that he didn’t have the Chinese vocabulary for, though their obscene hand motions left no doubt about their meaning. He refused, but they still wouldn’t give him what he asked for. When I finally made my way from the showers to the firecupping bed (I was the last of the six), I discovered one of the female attendants walking up and down on my friend’s back, occasionally stopping to grind her knees into his ribs. Apparently she’d been smacking the snot out of him for the last thirty minutes, and she kept going for another thirty. They’d given him the most expensive non-sexual massage they had. Other than that (revenge?) they didn’t try anything sketchy with a whole crowd of us there.

I was all for making an evening at the bathhouse a monthly ritual, but I won’t go back to the “Shared Happiness Bathing Garden.” I’d wondered about this place before — perhaps I was willfully ignorant — but now we know. If it wasn’t a given that the police already know about and don’t care and maybe even frequent this place I’d have phoned them already. If anyone knows of anything that can be done, please let me know.

There’s an even smaller, dingier, older school bathhouse just two blocks away that’s half the price — the kind that Mr. Chang the sidewalk barber says is too dirty. I suppose we could always try that one, or even try a different one every month. These places aren’t in short supply yet.

Other bathhouse & Chinese medicine/therapy posts:

• Fire-Cupping & Guasha for Dummies
• Chinese Medicine: Getting a Clue (Part 1)
• Getting guasha’d (刮痧) and octopussed (拔火罐) in a Tianjin bathhouse
• Getting fire cupped in a Tianjin bath house (or) Losing a wrestling match to a giant octopus
• Shower (洗澡)

Pronounced: àn sòng qiū bō
Literally: covert send autumn waves
Means: to make eyes at somebody; to secretly cast flirtatious looks at someone. Emphasis on the eyes.

Pronounced: pài kǒu
Literally: (apple) pie, mouth/opening
Means: “pie hole”, as in “Shut your pie hole!” or according to some of our foreign friends in Tianjin who just invented this translation/transliteration themselves: “The moving guys saw all the stuff and wanted 20 kuai extra before they’d do anything, so I finally gave them 10 just so they’d shut their pài kǒus and get to work.” (This probably won’t be funny to anyone who isn’t a language student, but to us it’s hilarious. ;) )

Walked out of work today into a Tianjin dirt storm. That’s what you get for being downwind from the desert and powering the place with coal. Dust and garbage and branches were blowing everywhere, even way up between the highrises. Me and a co-worker clawed forward on our bikes straight into the wind, trying not to look straight ahead. I saw, but just barely because my eyes were squeezed almost completely shut in an effort to keep out the dirt but not the taxis and buses, a recyclables collector coming towards us on a loaded three-wheel pedal cart. I was phoning Jessica to make sure she shut the windows when a cardboard box flew off and hit me in the shoulder! Bang! Just like that! On my bike! In mid-sentence! “I can’t believe it!” I yelled. “I just got hit by a box!” But she couldn’t hear me because she was out in the wind/dirt, too.

On the way I stopped to get dumplings at a place where they had a loud, one-legged cricket named Hu Jintao (after China’s president — they thought that was pretty funny). After a whole conversation in Chinese — the standard: Where are you from? How much do you make? How much is your rent? (never: What’s you name?) — the cook still felt the need to mime putting the vinegar and hot peppers and garlic in the plastic bag for me. Similar thing happened when registering with the local police: one of the officers was suddenly surprised when we laughed at something she said to her co-worker (“Oh, they can understand!”) even though we’d already been chatting for half an hour!

I’ve kept my beard so far. The students think I’m from the Middle East and people keep asking if I’m a Moo-sa-leem — even the Muslims, who won’t allow a ham sandwich in their BBQ’d sheep-on-a-stick restaurant but they sure sell buckets of beer every night. An online acquaintance in Xinjiang, where most of Tianjin’s Muslims come from, managed to get an e-mail out to me today saying that the internet is still shut off along with international phone service.

Group bathhouse trip this weekend!

Chinese character tattoos are apparently pretty popular in Vancouver. Here are the ones I saw on people during the eight months we were there. Clicking on individual characters below will open a dictionary list of associated words.

I saw 成 (chéng) on a woman’s neck in the airport. With just a single character and no context, I guess it could theoretically mean all sorts of things; 成 is part of the words for grow, change, become, succeed… She had sort of the trendy hippie/new-agey/alternative thing going on, so I’m guessing she meant change or becoming.

勇敢 (yǒnggǎn / brave, courageous) on a guy’s neck on the Seabus.

There was more than one 爱 (ài / love), of course. For some reason both times I saw this it was also on people’s necks.

力 (lì / strength), predictably, was on a guy’s shoulder.

生 (shēng / life, birth, to be born) was on a guy’s hand on the bus. From overhearing his conversation it was obvious he was some kind of an evangelical Christian, so I wonder if he was going for life or born again or something, maybe with another tattoo that I didn’t see.

Come to thing of it, I’ve also seen 爱、力 and 生 on coffee mugs at the supermarket.

No doubt cultural influence still flows mostly from the West to China rather than vice versa, but I think it’s interesting how these mundane examples suggest that cultural influence from China is at least trickling in our direction.

I walk into our old neighbourhood to get my bike out of the bike park where it’s been stored the last eight months, and Dà​niáng​ is sitting outside our old stairwell just like she always does. The Chinese gourd vines she’s planted cover the entrance and reach up to the third floor. She doesn’t recognize me until I smile and wave.

“Oh, it’s you! You’ve come back!”

“Yeah, we’ve come back!”

“Ha, at first I didn’t recognize you; you have a beard now, and also foreigners all look the same.”

“Yeah, I know, we’re all chàbuduō…

Ah, Tianjin. It’s good to be back.

Pronounced: bǎo ​bèir​
Means: “baby”, as in “How old is your little darling baby?” or “Hey, baby, what’s your sign?” depending on how it’s used. To Chinese ears it sort of sounds like “baby” in English.