Piss Massage

One of the things you notice in China is that there are a lot of people, and they all need to earn a living. One of the ways they do this is to find extra things to do for you that maybe you hadn’t expected, but which are somewhat useful (or at least pleasant). We played golf yesterday at a course in Suzhou and had a cart equipped with two caddies (both attractive females, both very knowledgable when it comes to guiding useless golf novices around their beautiful course). They did everything from polishing my balls to handing me drinks. You couldn’t do this back home – the cost would be prohibitive – but here it’s just part of life. Or at least it’s part of life if you have money. Out on the roads, newly minted Chinese millionaires are driven in their Mercedes S600’s around an assault course of bicycles, mopeds, pedestrians, trucks and part-finished roads. The traffic here is unbelievable: everything weaves in and out in an absurd ballet of near-destruction. Priority at any intersection goes to whoever has the most balls, and people on tiny motorcycles apparently have huge dangly ones because they ride like they’re immortal.

Of course they aren’t; we saw one squashed by a truck last night and this is apparently a regular occurrence. But, as I said, in China there are a lot of people, so you tend not to miss one or two, unless you happen to be relying on them for a meal tomorrow. I wouldn’t say that life is valued less here, but it’s certainly valued differently. It’s like someone kicked over a giant anthill and everyone’s running around building the new one. Not every ant’s going to have a good life but none of them are resting on their thorax, waiting for something to happen. There are millions of shit jobs here. We had frog ovaries on a papaya again last week (I can’t believe I got served this twice in a lifetime!!) and it occurred to me that some poor bastard has to get all the ovaries out of the frogs. I imagined the scene out the back of the restaurant where some sweaty Chinese guy was sitting surrounded by twitching frog carcasses, a large bullfrog in one hand and a spoon in the other. Of course, you could argue that it’s at least better than having to eat the fucking stuff.

Another place you see the ants at work is in karaoke bars, where the girls will sit with customers, drink with them and, in many cases, fuck them for money. These girls often don’t come from Shanghai – many are from poorer areas, mostly up North, and this is a great way to get a financial start in life, if you don’t mind getting shagged unimaginatively by drunken businessmen. We ended up in such a bar last night, but Kenny had brought real friends so no girls were required. Almost all the group was Chinese. Six bottles of scotch were dispatched, I sang Blink 182’s “All The Small Things” badly and one of our group punched out another guy in the corridor for some reason or another. At one point I went for a piss, and Kenny tipped the restroom attendant to give me a shoulder massage while I stood at the urinal. Now this is not something you expect, and might have been cause for interruption of flow, had it not been for the effects of the scotch. It seems that this is a “normal” thing (but here’s a tip – if you get one of these, a reach-around isn’t) and just another way for an enterprising person to make a living. Still, it’s pretty disturbing. The first time it happened to my friend Tom it caught him so much by surprise that he flinched and pissed on the shoes of the person at the urinal next to him. Fortunately this guy was drunk, holding onto the wall, and didn’t notice.

I had a lunch with a potential Chinese partner yesterday where we had, amongst other things, sweet and sour dog (which was excellent) and boiled pig feet (which were absolutely vile, like trying to eat linoleum and bone). Some people might balk at dog meat, but it’s all relative. This was the restaurant’s specialty so it would have been rude not to try it. If this is the worst thing I have to do in my job I’m one fucking lucky bastard. I woke up this morning with a high degree of confidence that my job will not involve massaging some bloke while he has a piss, de-ovary-ing a frog or playing chicken with trucks on a tiny scooter. Sounds like a pretty good life to me…!


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison