All new kind of pain.

While I wait for my washing machine to fix me some clean clothes so I can go out to shop some more clothes, I have plenty of time to write down the adventures of past week.

As mentioned before, I was in Mainland China for a few days. Not too far away or for long - just Shenzhen and Dongguan but I still stayed there for the night. I was there on a business trip to review some factories and as such there was nothing spectacular about it.

However, after the dinner (of all sorts of awesome Chinese food, but also including chicken feet and such delicasies I care not for) Wednesday evening, my host decided we must get a foot massage!

Before I continue, two points:
1. Getting a massage may not seem a masculine option of spending an evening for many Europeans, but in China it is very common.
2. The place we went to was actually for massages, and not for 'other things.'

So, anyway. We go in. Nice setting. A lot of cute young Chinese girls dressed in traditional Chinese clothes that made up their uniforms. Everything is tidy and clean, and the overall appearance of the place is quite grand. I like it.

We are taken to a big room with maybe 10 lazy-chairs.

At this point it's probably worthwhile to mention that our party consisted of myself, 3 other men and 3 women - all business partners or representatives of the factory.

So, we all take seats and crowd of Chinese girls come in with a buckets of hot water into which they add some herbal bath. Ok. Feet in first and while our feet soak in the bath, they start with a back massage. Awesome! So far so good.

Maybe ten minutes later we're instructed to take our feet out of the water and the nice Chinese girls wiped them dry and started the actual foot massage.

Everyone in our party had their own designated girl. Mine was probably the youngest, really cute and quite small in size (maybe 40kg or something). No complaints here.

So the massage starts. PAIN! Ohshitcrapdamnwhaddahell! My idea of a foot massage was a gentle and nice event with relaxing atmosphere, but what was happening was not it! She grinded her knuckles deep into my sole and I felt a sharp and strong pain as she kept on doing it on and on. Auch! Seriously, auch! With watery eyes I try to keep my game-face on. I look around and seems most people are going through the same thing as I am. Relieved, I turn to the guy next to me and comment how it feels nice.

I look at the Chinese girl, she looks up and smiles.

The massage took maybe one hour and of that one hour, maybe fourty minutes introduced me into an all kind of new pain. I never knew a small, nice Chinese girl could hurt a big man so.

To all my worried readers I can reassure, however:

I did not cry.

It was hard not to but I managed to keep my cool and pretend as if I was actually enjoying it.

Now, a few days later my feet feel great. Slowly being recovered.

So yeah, the massage was a traditional Chinese foot massage, which is used to find problems in the body and trying to fix them.

"It is the practice of stimulating nerves on the feet, hands and ears, to supposedly encourage a beneficial effect on some other parts of the body, or to try to improve general health." - Wikipedia

For reference, below a "map" of the human body.



This post will be really long, but can't be helped. There's one more thing I would like to write about.

Ever been to a cleanroom?

Before Thursday, I hadn't even considered needing to go into one. Turns out, however, that the factory we were visiting on Thursday needed to use cleanroom approach on their manufacturing facility to keep particles out of the products. So, on the factory tour, I got to experience the authentic Dr. No-laboratory atmosphere. Sweet! Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures there, but here's a one from the internet which resembles my experience quite closely.



So, yeah.. the whole factory was one big cleanroom. Everytime we switched from room to another, we'd go through a small room one by one in which huge fans would clean our clothes of whatever particles we might carry. Also the floors were sticky so all the dust would stay there and not be carried around by us. Some of the rooms had a maximum people count so that only a number of people could be present at any given time. This was to control temperature and also the particles and stuff. Really weird stuff. But fun.

I also felt very fashionable.

Anyway, that concludes my Wednesday/Thursday-post. I went to Shenzhen on Friday too for a meeting but aside from a totally insane driver, nothing surprising there. Friday evening I actually went to bed already at 22:40 because I was damned tired. Maybe more adventures today and on Sunday. I'll post on those on Monday maybe.

Now, off to see if my washing machine has my clothes ready for me.

Oh, and below a picture of those "chicken feet" we ate. They're actually called "Phoenix talons" in Chinese.. hah, makes it sound more fancy but the truth is, they're still just damned chicken feet with the bones and everything.