May 18: China Day 3 - Spa Day & Dinner Entertainment

Friday was the day my dad had to give his talks, so my sister and I were on our own to explore the resort. We paid about $16 each for an all-day pass to the hotsprings and spa, which also included a 45-minute foot or ‘doctor’ massage. In the morning, we relaxed in the hotsprings, which honestly looked more like dirty hot tubs than what I had imagined as a hotspring, as the water was infused with various minerals and other ‘healing’ elements. Then, after lunch, we set out to get our ‘doctor’ massages, which we both chose over the foot massage, because we couldn’t imagine what someone would do to our feet for 45 minutes. Big mistake. After a sleepy relaxing morning where I dozed off several times (also caused by the little sleep I was getting from working each night until after midnight or so), I was abruptly revived by my ‘masseuse’ who chose the most painful pressure points all over my body to administer the ‘doctor’ massage, starting with my face. These pressure points included the soft spots in my temple, the insides of my ears (!), the spot right under the inside of my elbow, and the spot at the very top of the backs of my thighs. I started being able to predict where he would administer the pressure next by considering where would be MOST painful for him to exert all his strength. My legs, after the strenuous day of Great Wall climbing, were the worst and I think I squirmed enough to keep him from administering the full brunt of the massage.

Feeling quite black and blue, my sister and I changed back to swimsuits to relax again in the sun next to the outdoor pool for the rest of the afternoon.

Dinner that night was a special one for the members and guests of the conference in our hotel. We had several different authentic Chinese dishes served to us continuously, including full-on unpeeled and un-beheaded prawns. Towards the end, we enjoyed a performance of traditional Chinese entertainment, starting with dressed up and painted warriors acting out an intricate sword-fight. The next act was Chinese opera, which I appreciated very much for novelty and insight into Chinese culture, but not very much aesthetically, as the ‘singing’ sounded to my western ears more like nasal screaming. We were also sitting really close to the speakers which made things worse. Next up was a dance with girls imitating peacocks, which was lovely. Then we saw an acrobatic display where a woman balanced on a board atop a rolling tin cylinder, where she caught metal bowls tossed to her, inched them to the end of the board, then flicked them up and caught them on her head. Next up was an actor who could change masks so quickly you couldn’t see her doing it and her face seemed to transform in front of your eyes. This deserves a video clip:


After that, we watched the acrobats come back out and set up a collapsed round table while a little girl, maybe 8 years old, performed all kinds of contortionist acrobatics. Quite a bendy little girl; it’s disconcerting to see her little angelic face on the floor next to her feet facing forward… Her grand finale involved spinning around with her body fully arched so her feet were over her head, holding onto nothing but a dirty rag on a stand inserted into her mouth. The adult acrobats came back out and did a roller-skating act on the round table they had set up before. Towards the end, the little girl came back on with one of the hotel waitresses in tow. The male skater picked the waitress up around her waist and spun around and around and around on the table, her feet flying out in front of her and her hands over her eyes. When he finally let her down again, she could hardly stand, her face was red, and she was gasping and sobbing. I don’t think that was meant to be part of the act. Their grand finale was skating around and around facing each other with linked ropes around their necks until the female picked up enough speed to let her body fly out holding onto the male skater, then they let go, attached only by the rope around their necks, and he spun her so that she whirled around perpendicular to the direction they were already spinning around in on the table, quite a comeback from the botched waitress-spinning before:



The next act was another dance by the peacock troupe, this time in elaborate gold costumes mimicking a goddess figure with multiple arms by lining up in a vertical line from the audience. The final act was traditional Chinese kung fu with dramatic fight scenes and the breaking of very hard objects using their bodies. There was the standard brick-chopping and also the shattering of long wooden poles over various parts of another’s body, starting with his arm, and included his back and his thigh. The information screen said that it didn’t hurt the actors, but judging from their expressions as they left the stage, that wasn’t entirely true.