I noticed another type of "store" when I was in DengFeng. Yong and I were walking the streets after having some chicken and noodles in the street. I was drawn to this one door that had a sign above it that depicted a guy and a girl dancing. Thus, I, the ever observant one, deduced that it must be a dance club. Especially when the door opened and a few girls stuck their heads out to look at me. I asked Yong about it. He told me that it was a dance club. (God, I'm good). You go in there, you pick a girl, and you get a certain period of time to talk to her and dance. Kind of like getting into a cab. You pay for the time you spend with her. I kind of thought that to be a fascinating idea, so I pressed it with Yong. I said "You mean it's a whore house". He wasn't quite sure what I meant by that, so I didn't push it. The whole concept of sex in China is one that is not broached lightly.
Which brings me to the girlfriends. At least, that's what I call them. The girls at the Shaolin "hotel" (otherwise known as the Shaolin Hilton) where I'm staying. They are all in their early twenties, late teens, and they either man the front desk area, or clean the rooms, or do the laundry. Let's not get carried away here, it's not as nice as it sounds. One girl kind of talks a little English, and every once in a while, I'll help her with her lessons. She's teaching herself, in preparation to try to get into da shuie, college. She has a big entrance examination in October. I call her the head girlfriend, or, the madam. She hasn't the slightest idea of what I'm referring to.
Which brings me to the all important subject of survival rules yet again. Always smile at the girlfriends. Very important. You absolutely don't want to piss the girlfriends off. And don't touch the girlfriends. It is not a good thing for a big ugly white guy like me to be seen with a proper young Chinese girl. The local populace will get bad ideas about her, and she's finished when it comes to finding a proper Chinese mate. (And Chinese women generally don't smoke; only the prostitutes do, for the most part). So smile at the girlfriends, and don't touch.
Me, touching "Madam", the head girlfriend. Now she's absolutely ruined for life. Shame, she doesn't even realize it. And I didn't know my head was so small.
Pissing the girlfriends off leads to two things. They dump the water in your bathtub, and all smile sex stops. I guess a little explanation is in order here. Since sex is of course out of the question (hell, even a date is out of the question. Besides, with the language barrier, what would you talk about? Hmmm. Typical date....), you have smile sex. When you go downstairs in the morning, you smile at one of the girlfriends on duty, and you have all sorts of nasty little thoughts. Of course, she smiles back. And you know damn well, that she's having little nasty thoughts too. And then you go outside to work out. Smile sex. Very easy, very noncommittal. Absolutely perfect. And as time goes on, the smile sex gets better. You have nastier thoughts, and of course, so does she. And you can have it with not just one of the girlfriends, you can have it with all of them. (Though, I would strongly suggest not having it with the oldest girlfriend. She's been here for years, still unmarried, and, well, quite ugly. She hates me. F---- her, as William would say. She doesn't get any smile sex). And you don't have to wear anything funky. No dinners, no bullshit conversations, no movies, just get in your dirtiest smelliest tee shirt, go downstairs, have smile sex, and work out. The perfect beginning to a perfect day. They like it, and so do you. And besides, the better the smile sex, the less chance of them emptying your bathtub.
Ruining some more.
Which your probably wondering about..... The bathtub. The most important appliance in your room. A key survival rule is to fill the bathtub up every night, with the hottest (if available) water you can get. It fulfills many functions. In the autumn, and winter, if your stupid enough to come here as I do, it heats the room. (I hope you didn't think there was heat here...). It ends up being slightly lukewarm by morning, and when you wake up disgusting in the morning, because you weren't able to wash yourself properly the night before with cold water and Chinese soap, you can dip yourself in it to rinse off. But most important, it is a reservoir for the almost daily water outages that occur here. You dump the trash out of the bathroom bucket onto the floor, and use it to convey water to the toilet in order to flush it. God forbid you have to go outside and use a "conventional" bathroom.
Another girlfriend. Same tee shirt. Two weeks later.
But the girlfriends are as regimented and unyielding as the waitresses. (I almost got into a fist fight with a waitress tonight, as she kept putting my plate in front of my laptop, and my chopsticks where the keyboard is supposed to be. I would move them and she would move them back. I would move them again, and she would stand there and move them back. Then, she just stood there and waited for me to move them again. I did. And she did. All damn night. I should have smacked her. But chances are, she knows gong fu and she would just kick my ass all over the restaurant). If the girlfriends show up, they kind of clean the room. That is, if you get up early enough. If you're not out of the room by 9AM, they don't bother. And with Yong staying up later and later watching VCD's into the early hours of the morning, we were getting up later and later. (The room was an absolute mess by the end of this week. I was either going to have to leave it, or burn it down). If you get up early enough to work out, and you smile at the girlfriends on the way out, and the smile sex is good, they'll go to your room, and fold up the sheet that you've been using for the past three weeks, and put it at the head of your bed. If there is trash on the floor, they'll push it under the thing they call a "bed". (Another survival rule: don't ever look under the thing they call a "bed"). If the thing they call a "roll of toilet paper" has been used, they'll give you another one. If it has one sandpaper like sheet left on it, then that's what you get for the rest of the day (another survival rule: bring toilet paper. And not the stuff with the flowers on it. You don't want the girlfriends to think that you're a sissy.) If there are a hole mess of dead bugs on the floor, well, they leave them. They won't touch and organize your stuff, and they'll always turn off the air conditioner (Yes, that's right, an air conditioner. And most of the time, it blows cool air. A blessed device). Occasionally, they'll open the door to the thing they pretend is a balcony. Just got to let all that humid air into the room. And, of course, more bugs. What fun would it be if you didn't go ugly bug hunting every night?
An honorary girlfriend. Doesn't work at the Shaolin Hilton. But from the way she dresses, I got the impression she was more the town "loose one" than a girlfriend. (Now my reputation is ruined). Same tee shirt?