Shanghai: two bathhouses

The last time I was in Beijing, a friend who was then living there, told me about a public bath in the suburb where we were staying. It had three rows of showers. The last row, he said, was where the local men would hang around, waiting for encounters. Other local men, not so inclined, would stick to the first two rows, knowing full well what the third row was for. He said I should take a look, give it a try. I hesitated so much, I never did, and have regretted it since, not because of any fun I might have missed, but because it would have been an eye-opener.

Earlier this month, when I was in Shanghai, I banished all hesitation and visited two bathhouses. This is my report. It does not try to be entirely objective. I write about the things that struck me, and therefore it is relative to my background and expectations. 

This was the only one listed by Utopia's website on the eve of my departure. I had also heard about it from a friend who had visited it just 2 months earlier, and who warned me about moneyboys there.

Daguanyuan is located right at the junction of Beijing Road and Xizang Road, a short walk from the main shopping street Nanjing Road. The building looks about 70 – 100 years old, and inside, it seems little has changed since it was built.

Entering the main doorway, there is a well-appointed staircase. Don't go up. It leads to a more expensive (and from what I heard) better quality place, but due to its price, there may be no one else there. So don't waste your time. Instead, go through the door on your right.

I opened this side door and immediately saw at least six naked men in a locker room. Oh, this is surely going to be interesting!

The price board indicated that admission would be 10 yuan. The man at the counter on my left gave me a ticket. The man on my right collected the ticket and promptly threw it away (so much for saving the environment), while pointing out locker no. 74 for me . . . without once getting up from his reclining chair.

No. 74 had its key in the keyhole, so it must be empty. I opened it and saw someone's belongings within. I looked at the ticket-collector. "Oh," he said, and pointed at another locker. "Use this one instead," he commanded. He showed no concern whatsoever that no. 74 was unlocked.

My confidence in this place crashed.

The locker room also served as a lounging area. People sat about reading newspapers, drinking tea or chatting with friends. The three workers seemed largely fixed at the corner near the door doing little but talk among themselves. Perhaps it would not be easy stealing from lockers, whether locked or unlocked.

All eyes were on me as I stripped. I had realised as soon as I entered that buff was the dress code for this place, bright lights notwithstanding.

Umbrella placed above the lockers, bag, clothes, shoes stowed neatly within, key carefully attached to ankle, I ventured forth. 

There wasn't far to go. The next room was the common shower area. After that, the hot pool. And that's all, folks.

I showered. Good supply of hot water, though the mixer tap was temperamental.

No soap!. Others had, but from the way they jealously guarded their soap and soapdish and/or plastic bag, you could tell you were supposed to bring your own.

After that, no towel! Were you supposed to bring your own too? But why bother drying yourself? There was nowhere else to go but into the hot pool.

And then I noticed that most people had a small towel with them. It wasn't particularly useful, but you could use it to sponge up some hot water for your face or neck. In any case, it might be useful for drying oneself at the end. But where to get a little towel?

It didn't take long to figure. By standing about and observing, I noticed that you could help yourself to one from the steriliser – a kind of stainless steel steam box the size of a washing machine. So I did, except that a moment later, I saw the attendant fetch a whole armful of used towels, and dump them into the steriliser. Without first washing them. Perhaps the germs might be killed, but what about the body oil and inorganic dirt? The rag I had just picked up was now very suspect.

The hot pool was equally dubious. The water was green, quite opaque, and screamed 'pea soup' at me.

But what the heck, I've come all the way, I'm going to give it a try. It was quite full and I had to squeeze my way in. There were about 20 people in and around the pool that measured two and a half metres by four. The water was pleasantly hot, but no jets. 

There was a lot of looking at each other in the pool, and probably a bit of groping beneath. Perhaps the opacity of the water was just what the market preferred. While I kept my hands to myself -- I didn't want to risk entanglements with moneyboys, whom I couldn't yet tell apart from the rest -- other hands did try to reach out to me once in a while. Certainly, sitting as closely as we did, or rather, as we had to, thighs often pressed against thighs. Was that deliberate? Or was that so common that nobody thought twice about skin contact? What were the norms here?

The attendant is binding his arm with a towel, preparing to give the guy lying down a rub-back. On the left, a guy is shaving. The water is a pea-green and you can't see anything deeper than 15 cm.

 
I noticed a guy sitting by the edge, shaving. Every now and then, he'd rinse his shaver in the water. That's not very hygienic, I thought to myself, but nobody else seemed to mind.

A short while later, another guy came in from the shower area, all soaped up, and immersed himself into the water just like that. Again, nobody cared.

All this time, there was a thirtyish guy, with quite a pleasant face, wading back and forth in the middle of the pool as if looking for a bit of space to sit, but possibly also trying to get others' attention. In fact he looked right into my eyes more than a couple of times. Being me, I looked right back, but nothing happened.

And then, for me at least, the main spectacle: the wader said to the attendant "ca¹bei⁴", meaning "rub back", and climbed out of the water to lay down on the poolside parapet. The attendant, who was at first in workclothes, returned a short while later completely nude, accessoried only by a cigarette. He bound his right forearm and wrist with a standard-issue towel. With the arm, he rubbed the customer with long strokes on his back, legs, arms and forehead. It was the traditional form of cleaning, getting rid of dirt, grime and dead epithelial cells. Nowadays, it goes by the fancy name of exfoliation. Then he asked the customer to turn around so that he could work on his chest, abdomen, arms and legs again. The groin too, which gave him a semi-hard-on.

Within about 20 minutes, it was over, and the guy went back to wading up and down the pool. By now, I was sure he was the resident exhibitionist.

I went for a pee – and noted the very basic construction of the toilet. There was a guy in each of the two compartments (half-height wall, no door) straddling the sewer drain, doing their business for all the world to see. This is a very common type of toilet in China. It didn't surprise me in the least.

That was enough. I showered again, after waiting some minutes for a free showerhead. Some people spent forever under the running water, washing their groins endlessly. With that suspicious little towel as the only resource at hand, I wiped myself nearly dry and then went to sit in the locker room for a while more to air-dry completely.

Actually, there were blue-and-white bath towels with each reclining chair. But they all look used, carelessly slung over the top of the chair. Did they even pass through the steriliser between one user and the next? Would I be committing a faux-pas by using a towel? What were the unwritten rules of ownership here? I didn't really want to ask the attendants. I felt they would only give me a gruff and contemptuous answer.

In any case, air-drying was better. It was surely a lot more hygienic.

I don’t know if it was just a fluke of the moment, but I thought the men in the reclining chairs were, on average, older than the men in the pool. Those in the pool were generally late twenties or thirties. Those in the locker room were more like in their forties and older. One older guy was quite sociable and asked me a few questions as I got dressed, "You're not from around here, are you?" and so on. He must have been watching me and seen what a greenhorn I was.

But hey, I had fun watching you all. 
 

Lian²bang¹ Yu⁴shi⁴ 


Friday 4.50 to 5.30 pm; Tuesday 2.30 to 4.30 pm.

I heard about this one from someone I met at Eddy's Bar. "Yes," he assured me, "this place is for our kind of people." He also advised me that there were different departments, and I should not bother with any other wing, except the 28-yuan one. That's for "our kind of people."

Lianbang Yushi is in the inner suburbs, about 2 km due south of Huangpi Road metro station. The main signboard on the street actually says Lianbang Cheng, and the gateway leads into a small courtyard. There appears to be a number of businesses grouped together around that courtyard (thus the name, which means "Union City"), including a hair saloon out in front facing the road.

Just a few paces into the courtyard, behind the hair saloon, is a curtained door on your right. Go in, and you'll see a counter with one or two women. I was asked which wing I wanted, and I said, "the 28-yuan one". That seemed to work; she took my money and gave me a ticket. Then she asked for my shoes. You have to change into slippers before going in. Finally, she gave me a key, a light cotton shirt and shorts.

On the key tag was inscribed a room number and a locker number. On my first visit (I would later make a second visit), I got room 312, locker no. 2. What does this mean?

Beyond the counter was a fairly long corridor. A sign pointed to the women's wing. Another to the men's wing, but when I got down the passageway, there seemed to be a choice of a ground floor men's wing and an upper floor men's wing. I recalled that the guy in the bar said that the section for "our kind of people" was upstairs. However, before going up, I couldn't resist pushing the door slightly to peep in. It had lockers, reclining chairs and older men just like Daguanyuan. That must be the more expensive 38-yuan option. Goodness, and I'm heading for the cheaper one?

Up the stairs, there was another passageway, which finally led to an attendant's room, where at last someone noticed me.

"What's your room number?" he asked.

312 meant third floor, so we went up one more floor. And down another long passageway to a bedroom. I was a bit taken aback when we entered. There were two single beds side by side. On one bed was a young man, shirtless, watching television. There were two wall-hung lockers – one would be mine -- and I was obviously going to share the room (the bed too?) with this stranger.

More perplexingly, there was an open window into an adjacent room, where four men were playing mahjong. All four were smoking, and both rooms had become fume chambers by their unceasing efforts.

The guy in the bed never made eye contact with me, which was quite unusual for this place. Almost everybody else did, sometimes for more than a few seconds.

The attendant stayed around as I changed. At first, I wondered why, but soon saw the point of that. While I had the key to the locker door, he was holding the key to the padlock. After I had secured the door, he stepped forward to put in the little padlock. A true double-key system.

Other than the mahjong room, the third floor had nothing else but more of these bedrooms. Although nearly all the doors were open, most rooms were occupied. People were lying in bed watching television, smoking, even sleeping. 

  The second (wet) floor 

 
I came down to the second floor again, where there were a few more of such rooms, but also the wet area. This was the main activity zone. It consisted of a hot pool, a dry sauna, two tiny steam rooms (I'd call them steam closets, as they were each barely 1.2 metres square) and a shower area. 

There were about 15 persons in the wet area, all nude.

In the middle of the shower area was a vinyl-covered bench where, not long after I arrived, an attendant was giving someone a rub-back. 

The pool looked a lot cleaner than Daguanyuan's – the water was clear all the way to the bottom – but somehow not as popular. Nor as warm.

The steam closets got the most traffic. People went in and out continually. Each could only accommodate two persons at most, which should be fun. But I didn't really see any 'action'. Mostly, people just kept to themselves while inside, standing, or sitting on the plastic stools. There was however, one occasion when, as silhouetted through the perspex door, I could that two guys were interacting with each other, but it was too blurry for me to make out exactly what was happening.

Unlike the steam closets, which were quite bright, the sauna was dark. However, it was tiny too. Four persons would be the maximum. On one occasion, when I pulled open the door to enter, I saw one guy quickly retract his arm from his neighbour.

Like Daguanyuan, you could help yourself to the small towels from the steriliser. No big towels were provided. Having no real need for the shirt and shorts provided, I would later use them to dry myself.

Soap was provided, both in liquid and bar form. Hot water was plentiful.

Attendant giving a rub-back (well, it includes the font) to a patron on a bench. Others just stand around and watch, or shower for ages. Nor do they have any qualms about sharing a shower cubicle with you uninvited!

 
The patrons were generally aged 25 to 40, in good shape and well-nutritioned. A few were clearly gym-toned. By my taste, about half the men there were quite desirable, but that didn't include the over-gymmed ones. Not my type. The only problem was, as a newbie, I should not be the one making the first move. I was not familiar with the norms and limits, and I couldn't tell if there were moneyboys among them.

In any case, my first visit had to be short. I had to leave by 5.30 pm to catch a French film, Le Placard, at the Alliance Francaise. When I asked the attendant to come up to the room with me to unlock my padlock, he asked me if I wanted a massage. Darn, now I have to make another visit, for I simply have to try it, just for the experience.

Four days later, I was back, this time earlier in the afternoon. There weren't as many people, and for a long while, I was relaxing alone in the pool. The attendant walked by a few times, doing nothing in particular, and so I took the opportunity to ask him for a rub-back (10 yuan). One advantage of being early in the afternoon is that when you're being worked upon in the nude, there'll be fewer people around to watch -- it's just my own inhibition; the Chinese don't seem to care even if there are a hundred others around.

Being new to this, it's difficult for me to say if he did a good job. It certainly was quite refreshing, but he didn't use as much abrasive pressure as I somehow expected. To finish off, he soaped me and then rinsed me off with two buckets of water from the hot pool. Thank goodness it was still early in the day and the pool's water had looked fresh!

Unlike the one at Daguanyuan, this attendant was younger, about 25 years old, and worked in his briefs, rather than nude. While he was giving me the rub-back, I asked him about a massage. I understood his reply only imperfectly, but he quoted two prices. 50 yuan for something, and 80 yuan for the other one. However, I could grasp enough of what he said to understand that 80 yuan included extras. Either way, it would be 45 minutes.

After attending to some other customers who had problems with their rooms or lockers or whatever, he searched me out again, and asked if I had decided to have a massage. Actually, I had decided way back when he mentioned it the first visit, but I wanted to play hard to get.

The massage would be done in the room. Thankfully, on this second visit, I had a quieter room (no. 301) with a window overlooking an alley. No mahjong session and cigarette smoke fouling up the place.

He used massage oil, but his technique was so-so.

Just as I was getting comfortable, the other occupant of the same room came in -- I hadn't even known there was another occupant -- to retrieve his cellphone and check for messages. He then sat down on the bed next to me to return a call. He was nude. His left knee was inches from my face, his cock just a few more inches away. 

What's going to happen when the masseur gets to stage 2 of the massage? Is my roommate going to stay and watch as he talks on the phone?

This is the weirdest massage I've ever had.

Things looked up a bit when the phone conversation ended soon after. But instead of leaving, he stretched out on the bed next to me and starting talking with the masseur! Most of the time though, he was really looking at me. Finally, he directed his attention to me and asked if it was my first time there, where I was from and so on. By that time, the masseur was working on my front and making his way up my thighs!

Then he – my roommate -- suddenly got up and left. By then, I was rather sorry to see him go. He was quite good looking, and seemed uninhibitedly friendly. I wouldn't have minded continuing with him after the massage.

Tipping is rare in China, but at the end, the masseur gently told me that he was expecting a tip on top of the prices he had quoted. I gave him 120 yuan for everything, including the rub-back. He seemed happy enough. Later I saw him settle accounts with the front desk, so the 120 yuan was not all for him to keep.

* * * * *

To sum up, there were many aspects of these two places that were strange to me, with my partly Westernised background. This only goes to show that these bathhouses are descended from an indigenous Chinese tradition, with their own practices and ways.

In years back, most urban dwellings would not have had running water or bathrooms. Public baths were an integral part of life. They were social centres too, for exchanging news and forming friendships (and an afternoon of mahjong?). Stress-relieving massages would have come along naturally. Playing with each other too.

The natural course of events – like in search of like -- would be that a few public baths might gradually get the reputation for being "play-friendly", such as these two. I don't want to use the term "gay". It would suggest a sense of identity and exclusivity that was not in evidence. Worse, it would lay onto something that was culturally indigenous to China, a concept that is (at this point in time) still culturally Western. Doing so would redefine what really exists into what we imagine.

However, that the men there were interested in men was clear to me. As they moved about in the nude, their eyes were always locking on to each other. They would look one or two seconds at the other's face, then flick their eyes down to the other's genitals for half a second or a bit more, then up again. They were checking each other out the way heterosexually-inclined men would not do.

But it's not enough merely to experience. We have to reflect on what we have seen, in order to learn. See the next article Strip if you're conservative.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

1. All the conversations reported here were in Chinese. Don't expect any English in China.

Addenda

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