Massage Time

Our time in Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) was one of many firsts—for me, one of those was enjoying a professional Chinese massage.

Actually “enjoying” really only accurately describes part of the experience. At the time we were fresh off two full days of hiking around the mountain, so we decided that a foot massage sounded fantastic. I’m sure that more experienced massag-ees  would have loved it, but as for me, I was using one hundred percent of my energy trying not to laugh-- it was so ticklish! After awhile the nerves became a little less defensive of the outsider’s fingers, but for the first few minutes on each foot it was all I could do not to instinctively jerk it away.

I also learned that if your legs are sore then it’s probably not the best time for one of these things. Even though we ordered the foot massage, it turned out that pretty much included all of the legs as well. Sometimes it just felt like they were trying to punish us for some unknown wrong, incessantly slapping and punching our legs this way and that; I bet it wouldn’t have been that bad normally, but the muscles they were focusing on were already quite sore, so it was not exactly what we needed.

In spite of this though, most of the hour-long massage was actually quite nice. Plus, at a grand total of eight American dollars, it would have been tough to beat the price back home!