Foot Massage

If you’ve lived here for as long as I have, you know that it’s a stressful place to live.  And if you know me, I’m always lookin’ for ways to relieve stress.  One way I like to relax is to get a foot massage (脚底按摩).  Just look down any street in China and you’re bound to find a local Chinese massage shop where I’d have to say the best masseuses in the world work.  These guys know about your chi energy system, your pressure points, and can tell what’s wrong with your body just by feeling the knots in your muscles.  And to top it off, most of them are blind!

Recently, my friend Jon from Boston, came to out to study Chinese.  Since it was his first time in China, I wanted to take him out to get a foot massage (脚底按摩).  You know, like give him the real Chinese experience, so I took him to my favorite blind man foot massage (脚底按摩) shop.  Jon never had a foot massage (脚底按摩) before, so he kept on asking me all these questions…  “Does it hurt?” “What happens if it tickles?” “What if I get excited when the blind guy starts to feel up my feet?”  To calm him down I started telling him about the benefits of a foot massage (脚底按摩).  Like, how with foot massage, or foot reflexology, each spot on your foot is linked to a corresponding area on your body.  If you get a sharp, stinging pain on a specific part of your foot, it means that there’s something wrong with that part of your body.  By getting a foot massage (脚底按摩), it helps to fix those “bad parts”.   By the time I finished with Foot Massage 101, he was exhausted (心情舒畅)  and we reached the massage shop.
 
We walked inside and introduced Jon to the owner and asked to give Jon the best blind masseuse they had.  Next, we were shown to our own private room where they sat us down in these huge lazy boy armchairs, gave us a remote control to the TV, and some warm tea.  Man, was it comfy! Then, they brought in buckets of hot herbal water.  I told Jon it was to soften your feet before the massage and we both dipped our feet into the soothing mix. Ohh!  Ahh!  (爽!) Finally, I was relaxed and I looked over at Jon who looked pretty relaxed as well.  Yeah, we were ready!

After a while, two blind masseuses came into the room.  They sat down in front of us and grabbed our feet.  Jon nervously looked at me and I told him everything was OK and to relax.  They started kneading, pressing, pushing and pulling our feet.  Their hands moved like they were playing instruments.  I looked over at Jon and he was lookin’ like he was in pain.  Then all of a sudden I screamed out, “OWWW!” My masseuse then asked me in Chinese, “Mr. Wu, you haven’t been getting restful sleep!”  I responded, “Yeah, I’m in the middle of filming so I’m exhausted (心情舒畅) . Can you fix me up?”  Next he started working on the “poor sleep” part of my foot.  It hurt but I knew it was good for me.

 Jon was pretty amazed at what happened and he was eager to hear words of wisdom from his foot masseuse as well.  Trying his best with his new language skills, he asked, “What bad part of body me need improve?”

His masseuse then replied, “YOUR CHINESE!!!”  

Vocabulary

脚底按摩  = Foot massage
脚底  = bottom of the foot
按摩 = massage
精疲力尽  =exhausted 
心情舒畅  = feeling better 
心情 = mood
舒畅  = happy, worry free
爽 = Ooo Ahh (feels good))