Good and Comfortable

After a full night at Gulumanhan, Ron and I came back to Lindong on the morning passenger train. For 5.50 yuan (about $0.70), we rode 45 km behind the last regularly scheduled steam-hauled mainline passenger train in the world. The train was a little crowded but not packed, and we found aisle seats across from each other. I should have slept for the entire trip back to Lindong, but I always have difficulty sleeping on trains. It's not that the gentle rocking of the coaches isn't conducive to sleep, but rather that I can always find something within the coach or out the window to captivate me. Shortly after departing, the sun crept over the mountains. Lazy clouds of white steam drifted slowly back from the locomotive, catching the first rays of daylight in a wash of golden pink.

We slept for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, as did Camron, who is still not fully recovered from a cold and bad reaction to his antibiotic that occurred just before he left for China. We had a late lunch then spent a couple hours at Yamenmiao around sunset where we watched a pair of eastbound double-headed steam freights blast through town at track speed, chatting with our taxi driver the signalman in between.

China is such a land of contrasts. The Jitong Railway was completed in December of 1995 with fabulous engineering, big, new concrete bridges, low grades and broad curves, even on its mountain pass. The crossties are cast concrete, the newest construction available. The railway was built to move freight and passengers quickly on a bypass of Beijing, and to do so for a long time. Yet in the still very much labor-based economy of China, many other technologies were passed by in favor of cheap, labor-intensive jobs. The most obvious example is the steam locomotion. All 900 km were in steam when the line opened. At every grade crossing there is a small brick shack with a yard bordered by earthen walls where a family lives, along with a couple of donkeys, some chickens, maybe a pig and a dog. The gates guarding the crossing are wooden and raised and lowered by pulleys and ropes. On many rural roads, they are kept down, and motorists, tractors and donkey carts are granted passage by the gatekeeper manually raising the gates. At each end of every siding where trains pass, there is a shanty where a signalman is stationed to throw the manual levers that line up the switches and semaphore signals for each train.

As the orange sun dipped behind the hills, Ron announced that he felt like spending the evening in a warm pool at a Chinese bathhouse. That sounded quite good to me, but Camron was a bit skeptical.

"I'm afraid it might make my cold worse."
"No, it'll probably make you feel a lot better," Ron retorted. "Just be careful not to swallow any of the water."
"The nurse knows best," I agreed.

With Camron finally persuaded, the three of us of let our taxi driver show us to a bathhouse just a few blocks down from our hotel. At the front desk, we traded our shoes for locker keys, then were led through hanging strips of plastic to the locker room, where we stripped down to only the plastic sandals that were provided. The supplied towels were much too small to cover anything, and I stepped into the bathing room naked to all of China, or at least to the three or four Chinese customers and staff (all male, as the bathhouses are gender-segregated). After a quick shower, we settled into the main pool of steamy water, soaking up the warm cleanness in every pore of tired skin.

One of thing I have noticed and puzzled about China is the absence of wash clothes in the hotel showers. Typically there is only a packet of bathfoam. Rubbing that around with my hands is hardly adequate to scrub off the dirt of a day or two alongside a steam railway. I soon found out the Chinese solution to that. After our soaks, laid down on padded tables, washed and warmed by the water from the bath. I lay there face up, completely naked, while a young, smiling Chinese man with brown teeth, wearing only thin mesh briefs, plastic sandals, and a bath mit on one hand, stood over me. He smoothed back my hair and went to work on my face. The mitt was abrasive and he rubbed hard and fast, sometimes too hard, but often it was just right. "It's like being licked by a giant cat," Ron said as he lay face down on a table next to mine. The dead skin came off in dark little rolls, leaving me feeling cleaner than I had ever felt since arriving in China.
As my attendant was scrubbing off my backside, a great, slapping, rhythmic beat arose from the next table. The slaps were hard and fast, like a drummer beating out a tune, and reverberated loudly through the tile-covered room. I stole a glance up from my hot water bottle pillow to see an older Chinese man laying placidly on the table while his attendant beat out a fast march on his back. That was coming up next for me.

Every slap was swift and well-placed, with a wet towel on my back to take the initial shock. I rose feeling refreshed, then joined Ron and Camron to dry off and go upstairs for our massages.
"I'll teach you a few words for the massages," Ron said. "Tang means pain. Say that if anything is uncomfortable. Bu tang means it's not painful. If she's doing a really good job, you can say hao shufu. That means good and comfortable."

We dried in the locker room, got our own pairs of thin mesh undies (which came in little tiny rolls -- I required instructions for putting on mine, given by two very animated, amused Chinese men). Then we got shorts and robes in black and burgandy silk, lacking only pipes to complete the Hugh Hefner look. Camron and I followed Ron upstairs where three Chinese women led us to big recliners. There were TVs mounted on the wall near the ceiling, closed-captioned so we could not understand both what were hearing and reading. There was also background music playing, a little too loudly, I thought, until it stopped briefly between songs and the sounds of honking horns from the street below wafted up.

We were served drinks while the women sat in front of us, wrapped one foot in a towel, placed the other on top of a towel, and began massaging it with oil. Ron, who's 6 feet 6 inches with correspondingly large feet, told Camron and I that one time he and a friend were getting a foot massage and asked the price. "20 yuan," came the reply, "but for you," she said, pointing to Ron's long feet, "30." He translated that to Chinese for the benefit of our masseuses, who all began giggling. They then began comparing the sizes of their customers' feet. The one in the middle, working on Camron (who's a bit shorter), pointed to Ron's and my feet, looked at her co-workers and gave a thumbs down with a shake of her head. Then she looked at Camron's smaller feet, and gave a smiling thumbs up.

The lady in front of me started giggling and pointed at my chest, and I realized my robe had slipped partly open below my neck. With a blush, I wrapped it tighter while the women giggled more.

"Showing a little too much skin, Scott?" Camron asked."She says you're good-looking," Ron translated."Tell her she's too kind!"

"Hao shufu," I said as the skilled fingers rubbed between my toes, across the balls of my feet and up and down my arches. The next thing I knew, I was waking up from a short doze and the foot and leg massage was nearly over.

The women with Ron said something in Chinese which he translated for Camron and me. "She wants to know if we want to stay for back and shoulders."

"Yes!" Camron said, before either of us could even take a breath.

In back rooms we laid on beds while the aches and pains of the roads and rails were rubbed out of tired chests, backs and shoulders. "Hao shufu."

We left some two hours after arriving, paying 155 yuan each, or about $20, for the treatment. We ate grilled lamb on skewers from street vendors, and I said goodnight to Ron and Camron at the hotel then came to the internet cafe to write yesterday's post. It was midnight when I stepped out into the dark street to return to the hotel. Two weeks ago that would have bothered me, but now I feel relatively safe walking the streets here after dark, even alone. Three years ago in Chabuga, the next major town to the east, men on deathrow were paraded through the streets and then excuted. Their crime: armed robbery.

Morning came much too soon, but I was still feeling good after my bath, massage and taking some time to write. Camron, still trying to recover from his cold, stayed in while Ron and I took our taxi to the train station. A short steam freight arrived not long after we did, and as it was the last train for several hours and the weather was turning cloudy, Ron talked us onto the caboose. I sent our driving home and settled into a metal seat near one end of the simple conductor's car. The conductor sat at one bay window wearing his dark railway uniform with red shoulder bands and a matching hat that he donned only when signalling other railway workers. Beneath his trousers were white sneakers. Nothing but steel-toed boots would pass for train service in the U.S. Across from him in the opposite bay window sat an older man catching a ride. Cabooses are the defacto passenger service on the Chinese lines that still use them, which are few these days. He sat facing the rear and smoking a cigarette, looking out the window with hauntingly sad, brown eyes.

The passenger train was running three hours late and we could catch it back to Lindong at Gulumanhan, giving us 90 km of steam haulage for 5.5 yuan. Our freight train began rolling forward as we steamed west for Daban. Here and there I stole glances out the front window of our engine on a curve, a thin line of smoke drifting from the stack and red driving wheels flashing. Behind, the tracks rolled out into the vast, barren farmlands, mountains and deserts of Inner Mongolia. Ka-chunk-ka-chunk, ka-chunk-ka-chunk, the wheels beat out a soft rhythm on the jointed rails. I put down the camera, settled back in my seat, and just watched and listened. Hao shufu.