How much would you pay to look like you've been mugged?

After another day of adventure in Shanghai, China, I love that I have a picture like this to show off. Your probably wondering how I survived the brutal beating that left these marks on my back, but there is a good back story to war wounds.

Any good Chinese doctor can do this for you (or to you) . . . . read on for the story.

The pollution in Shanghai worked its magic on me and I've had a sinus infection here for quite a while. I was feeling pretty run down two weeks ago, so I went with a few Asian expat teachers to try out some of the traditional Chinese medicine (tmc) that they swore gets your body working properly again.

I went to a spa/tmc provider located in a gorgeous apartment area near People's Square. I went in with my friends (who could translate Chinese for me whew) and put on the little Chinese pajama-type clothes they give to customers who get Chinese massages. The tmc practitioner came out and held my wrist to feel what was wrong in my body. She asked me some questions about how long I had been sick, my sleeping, coughing, and other personal tibits. I'm sure plenty of what I said was lost in translation--I find that happens often. I say, "I've been coughing and feeling sick because the air is polluted" and they get "she's been staying up late and drinking. Those foreigners." Well, many foreigners do like to party here, but I've been sticking to a normal granny bedtime of 9:30 pm so I figured she was a little off base when she asked me if I like to stay up late. Like to and get to are two different things right?

Then the doc talked to a few of her helpers and told them to give me a massage, to use a special heat treatment to suck the cold out of me and get my qi (or engergy) balanced, and to perform Gua Sha. Now when someone translates this to you they say, "hey, if you want to feel better, you need to do Gua Sha," and you think, "okay. I want to feel better. Let's try it." Like signing up for a job in another country, you never know what you are signing up for until you get here.

What the heck is Gua Sha?

Well, Gua Sha means to scrape the fever or sickness from the body. What they did for me was to put oil on my back and take a rounded wooded object (almost like a shoe horn) and begin to put pressure on my back with the object and stroke my back with the that thing repeatedly. This combing left quite the marks on me as you can see from the picture. Did it hurt. Okay, yes it did.

Surprisingly, the marks faded in about 4 days and were gone in a week. Sure it was painful, but I survived. I think that its one of those things that if you did it a lot, it wouldn't feel so bad. For anyone that remembers having to run the timed mile in elementary, before we knew that people actually practice running to get better at it, getting the Gua Sha treatment is a lot easier (not quicker though).

Did it work. Hmmm. Hard to say. It did make me feel incredibly tired, like I had to listen to an audio tape on rock morphology while digging post holes. My brain was mush and my body was about there too. I was so tired after the combing or back beating as I like to call it that I probably got the best sleep I've had since I moved to China. I was too tired to think, dream, or worry. My cough and sickness went down considerably over the next few days. I couldn't tell if it was from the treatment or not. It made me wonder about the old doctor's advice: "Take this and you will be better in a week. If not, you will have to wait 7 days."

Either way, I got an hour massage, a meal, some interesting heat treatments to suck the cold out of my body (kinda like putting a warm stick on pressure points on your body), and a nice Gua Shan beating all for about $50 bucks. I think tomorrow I'll just go for the massage. That sets me back about $7 an hour. I'll let you know how it goes . . . I don't expect to look like I got hit by a moped after this one though.

Finding an Apartment in Shanghai

August went by fast here in Shanghai. The whole month was unbelievably hot! I went apartment hunting with Brent and some friends from the school. I found out really quick that anyone that can get money off of you will. That's been the theme since I have been in Shanghai, China. I can't speak for everyone, there are always straight shooters out there, but for the most part, if you look like you have any money then someone will try to get it from you. It's the idea that, well, your a foreigner, you should expect to just get ripped off.

The school (SSIS) said they would help me and other teachers get some agents to find houses. The problem was, the agents would only show me the same two apartment complexes, and Brent and I didn't want to live there. The school, as I found out later, gets a kick back from their agents, and that's why they didn't want me going to other agents or place. hmmmm

Well, what to do? I put a posting on Craigslist, met an agent that spoke just enough English and we found an apartment in downtown Shanghai near the major shopping areas in one day. Up to that point, we had been searching with the school's agents for 3 weeks. It's better to just take matters in your own hands here. Just remember in China (or Shanghai at least) , if someone helps you for no reason its usually because there is a reason.

To get an apartment in Shanghai, you need to pay two month's rent and one month's deposit (normally). The agent who helps you find a place also get 30% of one month's rent from you and another 30% from the owner of the apartment for his services. If you pay enough per month for an apartment (8000 + rmb, about 1200 USD) then the fee is waived on your end, but I don't know all the details. That can be a lot of money for some people here. My apartment is about 80 sq meters, on the 17th floor, 5 minutes from the subway/metro station. The closer the apartment is to the metro and a nice area, the more expensive it is, but it is worth it! The metro here is fabulous and you can get everywhere quickly. Brent and I pay 3800 rmb per month or about $560 USD a month to rent. Our internet was 2000 rmb for the year. Our electric and water bills add up to about 500rmb a month, and our phone bill is about 50 rmb a month. So total, including internet, we pay about $665 USD a month. We also pay a maid (Ayi) $80 a month to clean and cook 9 hours a week. We pay her 50% more than the average Ayi. She makes $2 + dollars an hour instead of just over $1 an hour.

Finding an amazing apartment for rent at a cheap place in Shanghai is pretty easy. You just have to be willing to keep searching. There is no rhyme or reason for the prices charged on apartments in Shanghai. A fabulous apartment may cost $300 USD a month and a real crapper may cost $800 USD a month. Just know how big you want your apartment to be, how new, how close to a major area of town or a metro, and start looking. Don't say yes until you find exactly what you want. There are millions of apartments here. The one you want at the price you want is out there!

Arriving in Shanghai

Wow, I arrived at the Pudong airport in Shanghai, China on August 4th, 2009. The weather was hot and heavy, I would say suffocatingly heavy at 100% humid and about 95 degrees humidity. You can see the wetness of the air in Brent's picture out by our cottage at Sun Island. The airport was amazingly clean, but that was all that was clean as we drove and hour and 1/2 to Sun Island Resort in the Min Hang District of Shanghai. I had no concept of where we were, and the language sounded crazy. My first day in China consisted of opening the door to my little studio cottage at the resort (more like upscale cabins at a retreat), checking the place thoroughly for roaches, spiders, and any other creepy crawlys, turning on the air con, and sleeping for the next 15 hours.