Beijing bathhouses can leave you feeling even dirtier

• Source: Global Times
• [23:22 January 20 2010]
• Comments

I notice throughout the hall that everyone is getting a turn at a foot massage. There are at least a dozen young women moving from recliner to recliner with their kits of oils and lubricants.

My foot rub is just about done when the show starts and I ask the questions I should have asked much earlier. I find out the show runs two hours and I'm sitting in the front row!

The host of the evening is a young guy who belts out the latest hits from canned music. He's actually very talented and has a good and practiced stage presence. He deserves to move up from the bottom rung.

Next up is a clownish funny man who bears an uncanny resemblance to Bruce Willis. He's joined by an equally funny woman who slaps him hard whenever he makes a bawdy joke, which becomes increasingly common as the act starts to be loaded with more and more innuendo.

Up until now the evening is all in good fun and a great test for my Chinese. That's before an eye-popping beauty in a slinky outfit performs an erotic dance with a cane and a sturdy chair. She ends up wearing nothing beyond a bikini but coaxes the man next to me on stage and pulls down his shorts with her spiked heels to hoots and howls from the audience.

Finally the long show and the beer come into conflict. On my way to the washroom I'm asked if I would like to "talk" with a xiao jie (little sister ) in the back room. I'm told I could have a conversation, or two, for 400, 600 or 800 yuan ($58.57).

I offer a polite no thanks as my wife's "bukaopu" warning rings in my ears. In the end I make a dash for home after seeing six unanswered calls from her on my mobile. Thankfully she understood it was merely a research project.

The author is the founder of R.D. Communications. billsiggins@ realdogcomm.cn