March 13th - The Great Scrape

Have you ever heard of the Chinese Bath Houses? I used to picture a giant sauna and hot tub, where men & women wash themselves once a week to keep the lice and ticks away. Well, I found out first hand what it's all about. The "Harbin Modern Recreational Centre" has one thing the old bath houses of the past don't have - people to wash you. Now I'm not talking about a person who stands there in the shower with you. "Pass me the soap, will ya?" But rather a trained professional in the art of dermabrasion.

To start off, you have to strip down to your flip flops and join the rest of the unwashed masses in a huge bathroom. No, it's gender specific, unfortunately. The dudes go in one side and the dudettes int he other. Still, I felt a little bit uneasy standing around in my birthday suit. Especially when some guy named wong was staring at my wang. I wish I knew how to say "Jealous?" in Chinese, but instead I just winked at him. That seemed to scare him off.

Now, after the gawkers had their fill, I sat down in a huge hot tub. Actually they have 2 hot tubs - one is just hot, and the other one is scalding. I couldn't stay in the scalding tub for too long or my organs would start to cook. So, I just par-boiled myself and moved on. They also have a "cold tub" here which I found interesting. It's like a hot tub, only the water is ice cold. Needless to say, I didn't feel like racing my heart today, so I skipped that one.

After I sat around and dried off a bit, I moved on to the final, and most important stage - the scraping of the dead skin. That sounds a bit like a horror movie, doesn't it? "The Scraping of the Dead". I'd watch it. Actually the real version is kinda scary the first time you see it, but you learn to get used to it. Firt off, you lie on a massage table covered in saran wrap, and someone pours warm water all over you. The, using a special sandpaper mitt, a dude starts rubbing your skin from head to toe, releasing any tough dirt buildup and dead skin that is left on your body. I imagine a few layers of live skin come off too, because my chest was looking like a lobster tail by the end of it. He then asks you to roll over on your stomach. Being naked, my natural reaction was to clench - everything. But he asked me to relax, or at least that's what I think he asked me. He scraped my back, my gluteus maximus, and finally, in between my toes and the soles of my feet. That one tickled.

After I was a few layers of skin lighter, I was told I'm supposed to rub salt all over my body and go into the sauna. I did this, and I gotta tell ya, it burned baby. I don't know if the salt is supposed to seal all my timy wounds from the sandpaper, but I got some in my eyes, and boy did it hurt. Like the tubs, there are 2 saunas. Hot, and furnace. You're supposed to stay in there until all the salt liquifies and runs off your body, so I went inside the furnace to speed up the process. I couldn't stay in there much longer than 5 minutes, and when I emerged I felt like jumping in the cold bath, but I held back. Instead, I was given a razor and a squirt of shaving cream. They say after the sauna is the best time to shave. So I did, and yeah, they were right! Shaving has never been so easy, and I managed to avoid gashing myself up!

After I finished my shave, I jumped in the shower and reached over for the supplied body wash. There were 2 types - aloe, and milk. Milk? Okay, whatever. I washed myself in milk for the first time today. You'd think it would go sour, sitting there in the shower, but actually, it gave me some new power! My skin was still feeling a bit "open" from all the scraping, but when I applied the milk, that feeling abated. Now I felt great! I had just come from a 10K run before the bath house, and when I weighed myself on the way out, I saw that I had lost 2 Kilos! That can't be right can it? Well, actually, now that I think about it, all that dead skin they scraped off me probably weighs quite a bit. Now that I think about it, maybe that's where the term "skinny" came from. "Look at that guy, they scraped him all over and now half of his skin is on the floor. Let's call him skinny."