Trees in knots
(Knotted branches: Suzhou, China)
I spotted this a while ago along our street and it intrigued me. It is the whippy, trailing branches of a willow along the canal and someone has knotted them together. I can only assume this is for safety as the wind can be vicious through the roads of SIP. These would have swung into the faces of pedestrians, but now as you can see here, I took this photograph from below as the knot dangles overhead, rather than scraping our eyes as we walk. These are the pleasant, special moments in China that I enjoy, especially since there is hardly any graffiti or urban art made by the public, I take pleasure in the bliss of finding something that isn’t always there and that a passer by has created or modified for the better.
Now a different story; now we are back in China, Ying and I went for a foot massage last night to ease the week’s walking discomfort, but to relax. The way it appears to work here is that Ying always has a masseuse and I a masseur – in Thailand it is quite different and they like to make sure a girl never has a man massaging her, but here the opposite gender is preferred in massage. Since the Chinese New Year celebrations are still ongoing with pockets of fireworks released at any time, so many of the massage staff are on holiday. Another custom here is to number all the staff so that you request a certain number when you book. Ying favours number 16 and I like both 60 and 25, depending on who is available. If they’re not available then there’s no choice, we get who we are given.
So all these people are still away and two girls massaged us both. This doesn’t faze me, but now I can understand why we might not have met them before. They were hilarious, but terrible at massage. They had so much character and zest in chatting and laughing but they couldn’t concentrate. I’m used to a slow start with massage because there’s usually a short discussion engaged with where I’m from, that I am very white, my age and that my toe length is quite uneven. All these factors lead to some questions, but these girls were so entertaining that I didn’t mind any of their discourse. Ying spoke to them in mandarin asking how long they had worked here and did they come here together. Both answered, almost in unison, “do you think I would have if I knew she’d be here”. This set them off in another bubbling fit of laughter and left our feet under-massaged. It was worth it for the entertainment, and I bet some gentlemen would find them adorably amusing but we won’t be consciously choosing them in the future.
