This notice appeared downstairs on Saturday. It says that the hot water will be cut off from April 13 until April 19. This is an annual ritual in our building: sometime after the communal heat shuts down for the season, the communal hot water shuts down for maintenance. It lasts a week, if you're counting. I am counting.
It is true that many people in this world live without hot water. I'm guessing that not many of those people end up therefore washing in municipal water that has been flowing swiftly over long distances through pipes buried in the cold ground.
One kettle of boiling water from the stove turns out to be enough to make one small baby-bathtub's worth of frigid water acceptably warm. (Caution: Do not put baby in tub till both kinds of water have been added.) The grownups' bathtub, I realized Monday morning, was another matter.
Three or four kettles barely took the edge off; I could have spent till lunchtime just trying to get the water to room temperature. I gave up and got in the tub. As anyone who has ever waded into the surf on a warm April day might have guessed, I immediately wished I had not. A bath in moderately cold water is far, far worse than a shower in freezing water. It is muscle cramping, hypothermia, and death. While I still could, I stood up, opened the drain, and turned on the shower nozzle.
This was not going to work for a week. By afternoon, the quick rinse had worn off. I had to find a real shower for the next morning. What I was looking for, I decided, was a foot-massage emporium.
Massage parlors are everywhere in Beijing, and they are not necessarily sketchy. (Beauty parlors are the sketchy ones.) At the Liangzi Foot Massage Center, a large and semi-upscale place right out on Dongzhimenwai Dajie, I spotted "bath" on the menu of services in its lobby, for 60 RMB. Did they have showers? I asked. They did have showers, they said. They did not, however, have any hot water this week. The whole neighborhood was out.
The Oriental Taipan spa around the next corner had hot water, because it is attached to a diplomatic compound. But it would only provide the water in the form of a 200 RMB aromatherapy bath. For a shower, I would have to buy a "body treatment" for somewhere north of 400 RMB.
Time to widen the search. According to the all-purpose guidebook, Dongfang Massage had "private bathrooms," and there was a branch nearby, down on Gongti Nanlu, that opened at 8 a.m. So on Tuesday morning, after the baby was fed, I threw a change of clothes in a bag and got a cab.
Dongfang was a second-story place, sharing a hallway with a beauty parlor. The door was closed, but the sign on it said "Open." I went in. The lights were off, and it was dim. From under a pile of bedclothes across a seat in the lobby, a woman stirred and sat up. She was wearing a white-and-pink masseuse's uniform, vaguely clinical.
I explained my situation ("I have kind of a weird question, but..." is one of my more practiced phrases in Mandarin) as she blinked through the confusion and sleepiness. A shower? I would like a shower. I have no hot water at home. Can I get a shower? And a massage, if necessary! A massage, and a shower. But the shower first!
The woman led me out the back of the lobby and down a hall, also dim, with a thin and dingy-looking carpet. The hall passed through doorways and went up a step. The carpet ended. To the left was a restroom with a squat toilet. Ahead, in the furthest back room, was the shower: a hose with a showerhead. On the near side of the room was a washing machine. Wooden foot-soaking tubs were stacked next to the shower hose. She turned on the tap: hot water.
I balanced my clean clothes on the washing machine, hung the dirty ones on pegs on the wall, and took my shower. The woman had left me a towel the size of a cloth napkin. Good enough.
I got dressed and got my things and made my way down the hall. Another masseuse was brushing her teeth. I glimpsed a rice cooker.
My massage room was barely lit at all. A different woman was in charge of giving the massage. I had asked for the "Hong Kong" version from the lobby sign, which seemed identical to the ordinary Chinese massages I'd had before. Maybe my energy points were kneaded with different emphasis, but I couldn't tell. There were parallel chrome bars or rails attached to the ceiling. For back-walking massages, the masseuse explained.
There was no back-walking for me, just a rubdown. Through the door, I could hear more women, and then one man, talking and moving around, starting the day. When I came out through the lobby, half a dozen employees were gathered there, talking and eating breakfast. They watched me go with looks of amusement. I went out into the hazy brightness of midday. The towel had left a stale smell in my hair.
Wednesday morning, I filled a baby tub with hot water, then stood in the bathtub, scooped up the water with a smaller basin, and dumped it over my head.
This notice appeared downstairs on Saturday. It says that the hot water will be cut off from April 13 until April 19. This is an annual ritual in our building: sometime after the communal heat shuts down for the season, the communal hot water shuts down for maintenance. It lasts a week, if you're counting. I am counting.
