A China-Only Experience: Spa day with your Professor
This post, I have a lot I need to catch up on....what I've been doing for the last month, and what I did today, which includes my first brush with Chinese traditional medicine, in the form of GuaSha. I'm going to talk about that first because...because it's freaking cool.
OK, so I passed on the group hiking trip today in order to attend a Chinese wedding with one of my one-on-one teachers. I figured, hey, I can hike in the US, but a Chinese wedding? Not such a common opportunity. When we got to the restaurant (because a Chinese wedding is mostly centered around a banquet, no particular ceremony apart from that) we were a bit early. I'd mentioned to my teacher earlier, when we were learning beauty vocabulary (remember how I couldn't say "purple" before? I've been on a mission to pick up the trivialities of the language this semester and, well, now I can say eyeshadow, facewash, and mascara, all that good stuff!!! grin) that I wanted to find a spa like the one I went to in Xian, so when she noticed the one across the street, she was like, hey, wanna go check it out? So we did, and it was only 40RMB to try it the first time. We became instantly giddy, and made an appointment to come back together after the wedding.
Among the various things we could choose to do in our two hours of pampering was Guasha. I had no clue what it was, and didn't really get what they were saying to me as an explanation, so I went ahead and said yes. No big deal, right? Until I started analyzing the morpheme gua, which also appears in the word "shave." I held perfectly still for a full four minutes as I felt my back being scraped top to bottom, envisioning sliced tissues and spurting arteries. My fears were calmed when they paused and showed me an innocent-looking, safely dull horn blade, but I soon began to worry again. As they were doing it they explained what they were doing, and that my back was acquiring gruesome a reddish purple hue in the areas where I had "problems". Do WHAT?! The horror. I decided not to judge right away, my teacher didn't seem worried and said her friends swear by it. And after all it's supposed to go away in a few days.
So I got home and immediately got on the internet to see what had been done to me (you can see the fruits of my search in my last post) and apparently it's nothing more frightening than an ancient practice akin to acupuncture, intended to improve circulation and qi (or the electric field that scientists now know our body creates) flow throughout the body. This strengthens the immune system and helps with existing problems, ie back pain, headache, colds, fever, etc. The best part from my standpoint is this: Last October, I had to quit my rowing team at school because I injured my back, and it's been a very stubborn injury born of a facet disjunction on my left side that has caused the muscles around it to freeze up and make it painful to breath. Lately, although it had gotten a lot better after physical therapy in March and April, it's been acting up for some reason. Well-it was hurting this morning, but now, no matter how deeply I breath, or how much I twist, I can't feel a thing at all. I'm stunned. And completely sold on guasha. My back may look a little startling, but it honestly hasn't felt this good for months. I'm not saying I'm cured, but I bet if I keep doing this along with my regular stretching and exercise routine, I might be able to row again next summer in Seattle. Hallelujah! I can barely contain my joy at this particular discovery.
On top of the guasha, my teacher and I got rubbed down, facial-ed, massaged in accordance to related acupuncture meridians, etc, etc. As girly and decadent as it is, I now have a membership so I can go back every week if I want. Hey, I'd never be able to afford it at home-better take advantage of it while I can! Furthermore, I can share the joy, because I have enough punches to bring friends with me periodically. It's no fun to be beautiful all by yourself....
__________
The wedding I went to wasn't a particularly large formal one as Chinese weddings go. From what I gathered this was really more of an event for friends and coworkers. The couple will have a more traditional wedding with family members later on, at which point they'll probably have the groom go through the ritual of gaining entrance to the room where his bride is waiting, find the red shoes for her to wear, and then go in a multi-car wedding procession to another restaurant, where there will be toasts and feasting all day long. The bride will have three or more dresses that she'll wear at different points throughout the event, starting with a Western wedding dress in the morning and switching to Chinese traditional qipao' s later on. This time, however, we just ate and toasted a few times, heard a speech or two...and left a little early, because, well, there was the pressing matter of the spa appointment across the road, and the wedding started later than we thought it was supposed to. It was interesting, though, and while the spa day kind of upstaged the wedding in my mind, it was still worth going to see.
_______
It's been about three weeks now since I got back from Xian and started classes. I have to say, things are really going much better for me now than they used to. That two weeks with the Guos was great for my Chinese, I think I crossed some sort of invisible bridge while I was on vacation. Or maybe my tired and stressed out mind just needed to regroup and absorb what had been thrust into it over the summer. Whatever the case may be, classes are, if not quite a breeze, certainly no longer a black and murky quagmire of incomprehension. I also have some classes I'm really excited about. One of my one-on-one classes is on translation, so I'm actually learning a trade skill while I'm here along with Chinese. I've come to the conclusion that before I try again to join the State Department (for those of you who might not have heard, I didn't pass the written examination I took in April) I want to make absolutely sure that I'm not destined to be an interpreter/translator. I'm going to put one or two years into that-get a job, go to classes on it, take the certification tests, the whole nine yards. Then I should probably know whether that's my calling, or if I still want to go into diplomacy.
I'm also taking literature, composition, and of course my class on Chinese culture/food, which brought me to the wedding and the spa today. Overall, I'm immensely pleased; and I feel like I'm learning a ton.
I've started my Pilates class in Chinese as well-I feel like a complete comic sometimes, but the point is always made and people keep coming back, so I can't be doing anything too wrong! It's mainly an exercise in Chinese skills for me, and a chance to do Pilates again, since I can't seem to make myself do it on my own. Not too much to say about that-it's just something fun to do to keep things interesting!
On that note, I'll go ahead and sign out....lots of love to all, and make sure and read my post on Guasha!
OK, so I passed on the group hiking trip today in order to attend a Chinese wedding with one of my one-on-one teachers. I figured, hey, I can hike in the US, but a Chinese wedding? Not such a common opportunity. When we got to the restaurant (because a Chinese wedding is mostly centered around a banquet, no particular ceremony apart from that) we were a bit early. I'd mentioned to my teacher earlier, when we were learning beauty vocabulary (remember how I couldn't say "purple" before? I've been on a mission to pick up the trivialities of the language this semester and, well, now I can say eyeshadow, facewash, and mascara, all that good stuff!!! grin) that I wanted to find a spa like the one I went to in Xian, so when she noticed the one across the street, she was like, hey, wanna go check it out? So we did, and it was only 40RMB to try it the first time. We became instantly giddy, and made an appointment to come back together after the wedding.
Among the various things we could choose to do in our two hours of pampering was Guasha. I had no clue what it was, and didn't really get what they were saying to me as an explanation, so I went ahead and said yes. No big deal, right? Until I started analyzing the morpheme gua, which also appears in the word "shave." I held perfectly still for a full four minutes as I felt my back being scraped top to bottom, envisioning sliced tissues and spurting arteries. My fears were calmed when they paused and showed me an innocent-looking, safely dull horn blade, but I soon began to worry again. As they were doing it they explained what they were doing, and that my back was acquiring gruesome a reddish purple hue in the areas where I had "problems". Do WHAT?! The horror. I decided not to judge right away, my teacher didn't seem worried and said her friends swear by it. And after all it's supposed to go away in a few days.
So I got home and immediately got on the internet to see what had been done to me (you can see the fruits of my search in my last post) and apparently it's nothing more frightening than an ancient practice akin to acupuncture, intended to improve circulation and qi (or the electric field that scientists now know our body creates) flow throughout the body. This strengthens the immune system and helps with existing problems, ie back pain, headache, colds, fever, etc. The best part from my standpoint is this: Last October, I had to quit my rowing team at school because I injured my back, and it's been a very stubborn injury born of a facet disjunction on my left side that has caused the muscles around it to freeze up and make it painful to breath. Lately, although it had gotten a lot better after physical therapy in March and April, it's been acting up for some reason. Well-it was hurting this morning, but now, no matter how deeply I breath, or how much I twist, I can't feel a thing at all. I'm stunned. And completely sold on guasha. My back may look a little startling, but it honestly hasn't felt this good for months. I'm not saying I'm cured, but I bet if I keep doing this along with my regular stretching and exercise routine, I might be able to row again next summer in Seattle. Hallelujah! I can barely contain my joy at this particular discovery.
On top of the guasha, my teacher and I got rubbed down, facial-ed, massaged in accordance to related acupuncture meridians, etc, etc. As girly and decadent as it is, I now have a membership so I can go back every week if I want. Hey, I'd never be able to afford it at home-better take advantage of it while I can! Furthermore, I can share the joy, because I have enough punches to bring friends with me periodically. It's no fun to be beautiful all by yourself....
__________
The wedding I went to wasn't a particularly large formal one as Chinese weddings go. From what I gathered this was really more of an event for friends and coworkers. The couple will have a more traditional wedding with family members later on, at which point they'll probably have the groom go through the ritual of gaining entrance to the room where his bride is waiting, find the red shoes for her to wear, and then go in a multi-car wedding procession to another restaurant, where there will be toasts and feasting all day long. The bride will have three or more dresses that she'll wear at different points throughout the event, starting with a Western wedding dress in the morning and switching to Chinese traditional qipao' s later on. This time, however, we just ate and toasted a few times, heard a speech or two...and left a little early, because, well, there was the pressing matter of the spa appointment across the road, and the wedding started later than we thought it was supposed to. It was interesting, though, and while the spa day kind of upstaged the wedding in my mind, it was still worth going to see.
_______
It's been about three weeks now since I got back from Xian and started classes. I have to say, things are really going much better for me now than they used to. That two weeks with the Guos was great for my Chinese, I think I crossed some sort of invisible bridge while I was on vacation. Or maybe my tired and stressed out mind just needed to regroup and absorb what had been thrust into it over the summer. Whatever the case may be, classes are, if not quite a breeze, certainly no longer a black and murky quagmire of incomprehension. I also have some classes I'm really excited about. One of my one-on-one classes is on translation, so I'm actually learning a trade skill while I'm here along with Chinese. I've come to the conclusion that before I try again to join the State Department (for those of you who might not have heard, I didn't pass the written examination I took in April) I want to make absolutely sure that I'm not destined to be an interpreter/translator. I'm going to put one or two years into that-get a job, go to classes on it, take the certification tests, the whole nine yards. Then I should probably know whether that's my calling, or if I still want to go into diplomacy.
I'm also taking literature, composition, and of course my class on Chinese culture/food, which brought me to the wedding and the spa today. Overall, I'm immensely pleased; and I feel like I'm learning a ton.
I've started my Pilates class in Chinese as well-I feel like a complete comic sometimes, but the point is always made and people keep coming back, so I can't be doing anything too wrong! It's mainly an exercise in Chinese skills for me, and a chance to do Pilates again, since I can't seem to make myself do it on my own. Not too much to say about that-it's just something fun to do to keep things interesting!
On that note, I'll go ahead and sign out....lots of love to all, and make sure and read my post on Guasha!
posted by Timbre | 1:19 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home