Sunday, March 22, 2009

About the same

The other day, I went with one of my American teacher friends to get a back massage in one of the special and reputeable massage places in Changsha. This company has a lot of blind massage workers who are trained in how to use pressure points and massage techniques to help you their patient with sickness, pulled muscles, headaches, etc. Usually, I go with my foreign friend who is really fluent in Chinese, and I'm the one who listens to her chat it up with the massage people. But this time, I was with a different friend who is an English teacher and not fluent in Chinese, so I had the upper hand on the Chinese level. It was pretty cool to be in this position and I surprised even myself on the amount of topics I was able to discuss with the blind massage workers. I told them all about Mexican food, South Dakota weather, studying Chinese, etc. They also shared their experiences of having a foreign friend from Canada and they wanted to know about the economic crisis in America. At one point, the massage person who was giving my friend the massage said something about her being a little fat. Then, he reached over to feel my arm as well and said, "cha bu duo" which means "about the same" as in we had about the same fatness. I know that we my friend and I are not fat. . .we are normal sized and healthy. The Hunan people in comparison, are just really small, especially the Hunan women. You know how they say some women are shaped like an apple or a pear, well I would compare most of the Hunan women to a stick or a cactus.

1 comment:

Drew and Rachel said...

Portia, first you get called fat, then someone points out the zits. Who are these people!?!?

You have a lovely shape, and lovely skin.