I talked about hosting culture in two of my recent blogs, and this was inspired by my landlords, Mr. Liu and Ms. Yan, both of whom I introduced in my last post here.
My landlords own a beauty salon and spa, and every few weeks after we moved in, they would invite us to 来店里玩儿. This literally means to go to their store and play. We always meant to go, but I got pregnant. Also, Ben started working at my university, and we were both very busy. We were also suddenly spending time thinking about becoming parents. Then mid-September I miscarried. This would lead to a week in the hospital, and one month of trying to recover physically. The emotional recovery would take even longer. Did I mention I also got the flu?
This means even though we had been receiving invitations to visit their salon since June, we didn’t end up visiting until the second weekend of November. I told them on the Friday afternoon before our visit that we would come by on Saturday afternoon if that was okay. They said it was fine and even invited us to even come to their store that night (i.e. Friday night) and have dinner with them. I told them that I already had plans, which I did.
The next day I received a text from my landlord inviting us again to have dinner with them. I said “okay,” not sure what else to say. It was my plan to only go there for about an hour, but I guess the time would probably be closer to two hours if they wanted to do dinner.
Trying to make the most of our busy weekend, Ben and I went to the salon as late as would still be considered “afternoon,” arriving there at 4:30pm. Ben was not at all interested in having dinner since he still had work he wanted to get done that day. So, we decided to just stay for an hour like I planned originally. We intended to turndown any offer to stay longer.
At least, that was the plan.
When we arrived at the salon, no one was there. The door was open, but no one was inside any of the two rooms on the first floor or the rooms upstairs. We were not sure what to do. However, a few minutes later our landlords came strolling in. They apparently had just driven over to the store upon receiving the text I had sent 30 minutes earlier saying we were on our way. They asked us to sit down in the waiting area and immediately started offering us snacks and tea. Each new snack they offered came with a story of its origin.
One treat was handmade by Mr. Liu’s family in his hometown, and they then mailed it to him. Another snack was organic, local, and in season. Also, as we spoke, there was a bakery chef making our dinner. We had to stay for dinner.
Our landlord promised to have us home by 7:00 pm, so Ben could get some work done.
We talked and ate one too many snacks considering we would soon be eating dinner. Like it had been when I met Ben’s parents for the first time, we were repeatedly encouraged to eat. Fruits were peeled, bags were opened, and all were handed to us as if we were starving but too polite to eat anything. I ate as slowly as I could to hopefully limit how much food they could put in my hands.
During our pre-dinner conversation, we came to learn that our landlords had rearranged all their appointments for Saturday afternoon and evening to the following days. Mr. Liu pointed out that it would be meaningless (多没意思) if they could not accompany us when we came to visit the store. If people were coming in and out for massages or to have their make-up done, then our landlords would not be able to really keep us company. So, they cleared their schedule for us.
By this point, Mr. Liu promised to have us home by 9pm. We didn’t argue.
We would have a home-cooked meal in a small apartment that our landlord’s rented across from the beauty salon for one of their employees, who I will call Grace. The bakery chef was a young man who worked at one of the nearby bakeries. They apparently were all good friends, like family really.
This would be a theme of the night. Mr. Liu kept expressing that we were family now. He would call us 自己人, literally translated as self-people. However, it is more naturally translated as “my people.” We were his people, his family. This was why we were not eating dinner out. That was also 多没意思 or meaningless. Mr. Liu would remind us that he was giving us all the best snacks, not the snacks that just any guest or customer would get, like candies in a bowl. Taking us out to eat would also show that he didn’t see us like family.
We were family now, he told us. The best of everything they had they would share with us.
This also reminded me of conversations that I had with Ben’s parents when I first met them. Despite the fact that we were just meeting after 18 months of disapproval, Ben’s mom was now telling me that she saw me like a daughter. We were family now. However, this made a lot more sense to me given my plans to marry their son. With my landlords, though, I was only planning to rent their apartment for maybe a year or two. I didn’t, honestly, see my landlords as family, nor did I understand why they would see me that way. However, like I normally did with Mr. Liu, I nodded meaningfully, made eye contact to communicate that I was listening, and smiled.
I could tell that Ben was equally confused and overwhelmed by the hospitality of our landlords.
Dinner offered a reprieve because I could replace nodding and smiling with eating. The food was pretty good. However, while I ate, I was constantly being asked to express how I felt about the food. When I responded that all the dishes were good, Mr. Liu was like, “That’s such a fake response.” I felt pressure to somehow express that I did enjoy the food, but I wasn’t sure how to do that. I was starting to become fatigued after three hours, at this point, of conversation and guesting, which can be almost as exhausting as “hosting” in certain contexts. Mr. Liu concluded that I did not enjoy the food, saying that they didn’t offer us the kind of food we really liked. He offered to right this wrong by going tomorrow to buy whatever we wanted and cooking for us himself!
I felt awful for the bakery chef who likely believed Mr. Liu’s conclusion more than my statements that I did enjoy the food. However, I didn’t know how to fix it. In hindsight, I wish I had said, “I’m from the US, not China. When I say I like something, that is what I mean. I’ve lived in China five years, but I still speak very directly.” I would then look directly in the eyes of the chef and tell him that I had enjoyed his cooking. In the moment, though, nothing convincing came to mind, and I just kept putting food in my mouth.
After dinner, Mr. Liu stayed upstairs to wash the dishes, and I went with Grace, who had also joined us for dinner, to have my nails done. I had insisted already that I did not need them done, but there was no turning down the force of their hospitality. While I would have my nails done, Ben would be given a back massage by Ms. Yan.
The Back Massage
Mr. Liu had been talking about it and the Traditional Chinese Medicine that was a part of it for the 3+ hours we had been there at this point. He mentioned that this massage and medicine combination was something that he only did for his most esteemed customers. He mentioned prominent business men and people from the entertainment industry in Kunshan being among those he would consider offering this massage to. The average customer did not get this treatment, but we were family. We would have it done, and for free, of course.
While I got my nails done and Ben stripped down to the waist for his massage, I taught Mr. Liu and Grace English expressions. Mr. Liu learned the phrases, “Welcome.” “How may I help you?” “Please have a seat?” and “Would you like some tea?” Grace knew more English. Being much younger, probably her early twenties, these words were not so distant in her past as it must have been for Mr. Liu. Grace would sometimes, unhelpfully, laugh at Mr. Liu’s attempts at speaking the language. However, I was quite impressed by how quickly he learned and the clarity with which he spoke. He obviously had an ear for the language.
At this point, I had no sense of the time. It was my intention to go home as soon as my nails were finished, hoping that Ben’s massage would be done then too. However, Mr. Liu would not hear of my leaving without my also getting the special back massage. Grace, he mentioned, was quite good at giving a massage, and he hurried her along in the gel manicure so that I could start my massage.
When I signed the rental contract back in June, I never in my wildest imagination imagined that Ms. Yan would end up seeing both Ben and I stripped to our waist, nor did I imagine that she would use her own hands to give us a massage.
The Traditional Chinese Medicine
The Traditional Chinese Medicine used for the massage had to be piping hot when they put it on your back. “Is it hot?” Ms. Yan would ask? “Yes,” we would respond. However, she would continue to apply it to your back. As Grace began my massage, Ben was still laying on the bed beside me with hot brown medicine under Saran wrap laying on his back. They had also covered him with heavy blankets. When Ben complained of being too hot the first time, Ms. Yan helped him adjust a little. When he said that he could no longer stand the heat, she said, “It’s working.” She did not help him adjust this time, nor further acknowledge his complaints. I began to worry about what was in store for me once they go to the hot medicine.
As Grace gave me a massage, Ms. Yan watched and gave her feedback. She would sometimes take over to demonstrate how to do different techniques. I started to feel like a massage test dummy. I was sure I would be sore the next day, but I hoped it would overall be refreshing for someone who spends too much time sitting at a computer.
After they finished my massage, they finally let Ben free from the oven he was in. They removed the medicine from his back and fussed about how unhealthy he was. He needed to come back for more treatments. They noted the yellow looking sweat that was now on his back as proof of their conclusions. They even took photos of his back and shared it with him, showing Ben the bruising. Healthier patients would not have such deep bruising they explained.
In this moment, I was grateful for being dark-skinned and weighing almost 20 more pounds than Ben. This made me harder to bruise and yellow sweat harder to see.
At this point, Grace bid everyone good night as Ms. Yan took over my massage. She was going to bed already? What time was it? When they finally removed the medicine from my back, I was given a moment of privacy to get dressed and check the time.
It was 11pm. Surely, we would be able to go home now.
Our landlords offered to drop us home. They did after all know where we lived. I asked them how much the cost of today’s services would be. They insisted that the services they offered would be free. They themselves would not make any profit. I would just need to pay the fee for Grace. This fee would be 120 RMB (a little less than $20). For a gel manicure and massage, that is quite inexpensive. I had only had one gel manicure before in Shanghai, and it was above 300 RMB. I didn’t care about the price though.
By time we finally got home, it was 11:30pm, and Ben and I were still incredibly confused. Ben decided to look up our landlords salon on his phone, and he found that they currently had a special for a gel manicure valued at 38 RMB. Also, it seemed that you could get a similar massage as we did, though it would only be for 90-minutes, instead of the close to three hours Ben had endured. Mine, thankfully, due to the time had been closer to the advertised 90-minutes.
The last time we went for a massage, Ben had sworn off them. Like my sister Zain, he felt he was too thin to appreciate them. It was mostly just torture that left him bruised for days. Interestingly, after the first and only time I had a gel manicure, I had also sworn never to get another because of how it had affected my nails.
Nevertheless, Ben got another bruising massage, and I got a beautiful, but unwanted, manicure. I loved the colors, and it is the featured image, but I would have preferred if my landlords had simply sat with us for an hour and chatted, then went about seeing to their regularly scheduled customers.
This experience left me with a lot of question marks. They seemed like very kind, upstanding, successful individuals, but what did they want from us? Why were they being so kind? Why did Mr. Liu spend so much time talking about how he was offering us the best of everything they had? Is it that I’m a foreigner? Or that I’m from the US specifically? Is it that I work at a university? Were they trying to build up 关系 (“guanxi”) or a mutually benefiting relationship? On the ride home, Ms. Yan said that they just wanted us to see them more like family or friends instead of just as our landlords. Ben and I tried to communicate that we would be more comfortable doing that if they weren’t so 客气 or polite. They need not offer us so much in order to ensure our friendship.
That night I said to Ben, “Just think how boring your life would be if you had married a Chinese woman. This would never have happened to you if I were Chinese. Isn’t it exciting being married to me? You just never know what will happen. You have so many more stories! You’re welcome.”
Ben, my darling, you’re welcome, or maybe in this case I’m sorry is more appropriate.
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