Blind Masseuses, Dwarf Kingdoms, Mystery Meals, and Ten Days of Traffic

On Monday I went with Maria, from Spain, and Erin, from Canada, to get massages at the parlor across the street from the school.  Paying someone I don't know to give me a massage isn't something I've done all that often (ever??) in the states, partially because of the cost but also because I'm fortunate enough to know people who are willing to give massages gratis, or at least for trade.

Parlors here are different though, so I thought I'd give it a try.  First of all, in China it is very common for the masseuses to be either blind or have severe eye problems.  As odd as it may sound to say "I got a blind massage," that's essentially what it was.  It seems that the society here is much less forgiving of people with differences than that of America.

In many cases, one of the best jobs a blind person could hope to have is to be a masseuse...As unfortunate as that is, if you think about it, it kind of makes sense on some level--with the loss of sight comes a keener perception of touch.  It's just too bad that being disabled here doesn't leave people with many options, other than becoming a beggar on the street.

Despite my discomfort at treating a massage given by a blind person as some kind of specialty, I really did appreciate it.  The second reason I decided to try it was purely economic: 40 yuan for 1 hour. 40 yuan?! That's less than $6! Oy!  I can't pass that up.  It'd almost feel like I was wasting money. Heh

First they had us sit down and soak our feet in a scalding bucket of water while they massaged our backs and necks.  Then they massaged our feet and legs for a while, which was really hard to sit through at times.  The idea of light touch seems foreign to them.  It was SOO HARD! I thought my back was going to break.  The other girls I was with told me to stick it out though because after it was over it'd be so worth it.  They were completely right.  :-)

Kingdom of the Dwarfs, Kunming, China

While we were getting our massages, we got to talking about other ways people with disabilities are treated here.  Erin told us about a place in Kunming called Kingdom of the Dwarfs, which is exactly what it's name suggests.

The rule there is that you have to be under 4'3'' to live in the village, which is built to scale.  The place is made up of 120 dwarfs who live and work there, singing and dancing for tourists for their income.  Despite the enormous amount of humanitarian outrage at kingdoms like these all over China, many of the dwarfs report that they love living there because it's the only job opportunity they will get, provides a community, and opens up the possibility of marriage and friendship with others who are going through the same struggles.

Honestly no matter what people who live there might say, the idea of this village sickens me.  I am so used the outlook back home, where many people go to great lengths to help disabled people live as normal a life as possible, never to isolate them and leave them to become some kind of kitschy icon.  This village is basically the opposite!--dwarfs putting on singing and dancing shows for tourists, and making a living simply due to the fact that they are very small, and people find that amusing.  This is clearly one of the many astronomical cultural differences that foreigners (or is it just me?) have a hard time understanding.  I heard they have similar villages for overweight people, those with gigantism, and the same for many other disabilities.

That night I went out to a bar called Aoma Bar with John (from Holland), Mark (UK), and Pete (UK).  They're all fun to hang out with and super funny.  John is so tall, he bangs his head on even the highest door frames.  I think he said he was 6'5!

By far our most discussed topic is of the many differences between life here versus in our respective countries.  This time we compared death witness stories (apparently in the UK everything is under-wraps.).  I told mine about the shooting at this year's pink parade before gay pride.

After hanging out at the bar for about two hours, we were all hungry so we headed over to this noodle restaurant right next door that specializes in Across-the-Bridge noodles, a Kunming noodle-soup specialty.

Allegedly the dish got it's name after a scholar moved to a distant town to prepare for his imperial exam.  His loving wife would travel to see him across a nearby bridge with a bowl of this dish to give to her husband each day.  When the scholar did well on the exam, he attributed his success to his wife's noodles.  Awww, sweet story.

My very own bowl of Across-the-Bridge Noodles

In contrast to this story, our experience there proved less than delectable.  As is usually the problem when I've gone to restaurants here, ordering was the hardest part. This one in particular was extremely inaccessible to foreigners as not only was the entire menu in Chinese with no pictures anywhere, but you also had to order at a counter away from the eating area, so you couldn't easily point to someone else's dish and say "Wo yao ji ge" (I want this one).

The man at the counter immediately picked up on our dilemma and tried to help us by simply offering meals in various price ranges, since that's the one thing many beginning Chinese speakers can actually understand.  He offered us a range of whether we wanted to buy the meal that was 10 kuai, 20, 40, 60, or 100 kuai per person.  Thinking it didn't make much difference which we chose (since we wouldn't know what was coming anyways), I decided on the 40 kuai/person meal (about $6).  That price is on the expensive end for China, but was in the middle of the prices he offered so I figured it couldn't be too bad.

We sat down and awaited our mystery meal.  It was a really odd experience, knowing that we had just ordered something but had absolutely NO idea what was in store for us.  When the waitress came, she toted bowls of noodle soup (so far so good!), followed by no less than 12 smaller dishes of various items that could be eaten in the soup.  Last was a big white bowl of........something.  We had no idea what.  It looked brown like meat, but upon touch it jiggled.  Hmmm.

Mystery Meal

Mystery Meat

We gave everything a fair try.  The majority of the mystery meal tasted great, except for this ....thing.....we couldn't figure out what it was, and it left a terrible after taste.  Guesses were that it might be kidney, or some kind of pancreas.

We left the place feeling embarrassed that we hadn't managed to finish even half of what we had ordered and silly that we had just spent so much more money than we had needed to.

The next day I asked my dad about the mystery meat.  He is generally pretty knowledgeable when it comes to food, especially Chinese food.
"It was brown and jiggly and soaked in reddish brownish sauce," I described. "Kind of like the consistency of jello, but savory and gross."

He suggested that the dish might have been congealed and cubed pig's blood, a highly sought-after Chinese specialty. I entered "pigs blood" into my google search bar, to find pictures of the exact same dish I had just eaten. Aaaah!  Blech! Live and learn, I guess.  Good thing I don't keep kosher.

Yesterday I was really hungry after class so I went over to this little bar/restaurant by the school and ordered a strawberry smoothie and a fruit salad.  The waitress said that they had run out of strawberry.  I quickly scanned the menu for the list of other flavors, an action to which my waitress responded by informing me that they were also out of banana, mango, and apple. That's four out of the five flavors!...So that just left me with papaya.  I decided to skip the smoothie altogether, since I don't much care for papaya.

Funny thing is I had already ordered the fruit salad without any complaints from the waitress.  At this point I was really curious as to what on earth could possibly be in it if they really were out of all the items she had said.  When it came, it turned out to be made up of apple-pear, papaya, and ...BANANA!  huhhhh???  The waitress just said they were out of that! I was so amused I took a picture of it (see below).  Also had sweet mayonnaise on it, something I could have done without.  :-P

I see you, banana.

After I got home I told Pete about my experience.  He said that he went to the same place and ordered a cup of black coffee with Baileys in it the other day.  They told him they were out of both of those items, and that all they had left in terms of coffee were lattes and cappuccinos.  Haha!  How the heck are they making lattes with no coffee?!

Pete said he argued with them, convincing them that they must have black coffee until they broke down and "found some."  His theory is that they are trying to get confused foreigners to buy more expensive drinks, which makes complete sense to me in his case.  I still can't find a reasonable explanation for my smoothie experience, except that maybe papaya is cheaper to buy here than all the other fruits they "offer?"  Puzzling.

In all I'm definitely developing a healthy social life here, even on weekdays, despite having to wake up for class at 7:30am.  Last night I went to the Hump Bar again with Pete, John, and Mark.  As usual we compared lots of stories from our home countries, but our main topic tonight was drinking games.  It turns out they don't play Beer Pong or Flip Cup in the UK, nor do they in Holland!  I explained the games to them, then taught them turrets and Battleship, two of my all-time favorites.

I have to say...some of the differences in the ways Americans speak English versus the way Brits do are very confusing:  So the word "Buoy," like...the floating thing out in the sea...the British pronounce that word as "boy."  When I heard this I gave the argument that the American pronunciation "boo-ee" is way more practical and could save lives--what if there's a boy drowning out in the sea but people get confused when someone runs over and tells them "Hey, there's a boy really far out in the water!" People would look at him like he's an idiot.  "Duh there's a buoy, there are lot's of them. Haven't you ever been to the ocean before?"  Yeah sure, sure, context clues blablabla.  But I'm just sayin'...

Last piece of news:
At lunch today I heard there was a 10-day, 60-mile traffic jam from Beijing to inner Mongolia!  The media is reporting that it was the biggest/longest traffic jam ever.  It started on the Beijing-Tibet expressway on August 14th, and was aggravated by road maintenance along the way.  Not surprisingly, local merchants made a fortune capitalizing off of stranded drivers by selling food and drinks to them on the road at inflated prices.  Drivers were only able to move a third of a mile in a day. ...and we thought Los Angeles was bad.  Oy gevalt!

Sign outside the bathroom at The Hump Bar.
Good thing it's there too,
or I wouldn't have known that I shouldn't discard my boxers in the toilet,
torture someone in the restroom,
 or pee outside of the (nonexistent) toilet bowl.