Apr 16 2008
China to bring in new standards to clean up bathhouse trade
Bath culture is deeply rooted in China, mere soap and shampoo isn’t enough. It’s 泡澡堂子soak and linger for us. The seedy reputation is perhaps gained during the last 10 years or so, when Chinese is trying to over done everything, as if to recuperate their lost few decades under Mao. The new bathhouses spring up everywhere, grand in multiple levels like shopping mall (great), to modest just for a wash. It has gone co-ed, the lounges are good and bad (prostitution).
Xinghua Yuan, the luxury bath house not far from our house in the city was one of Nainai’s indulgences. She loved to go, and taking me alone. What I missed the most is the skin shedding ritual, the female attendant would use cloth scrub your entire body till it became the color of a lobster. Few time I visited the bath house - oppps, the spas (exfoliate should replace scrub - have to be politically correct in da USA) - here, nothing came even remotely close.