As the Typhoon Turns

24 hours ago, both apprehensive and excited, I was wondering what my first typhoon experience would be, but since it wasn't supposed to hit full force until late afternoon and school was canceled, there was a giddy feeling among the teachers who had gathered at S'bucks. After lunching on an authentic Subway tuna sandwich, I went to visit Carla and Randal next door to wait it out, and eventually the group swelled to include 3 other teacher couples with young children from their building and one other single woman. As happens, the men somehow ended up escaping from the noise to drink beer in someone's apartment upstairs, until the moms decided to stage a coup and call them back. By this time it was 4 in the afternoon, and though it was dark, windy, and blowing rain, it was still safe enough for the girls to walk down the street for massages. We split into 2 groups; the ones who wanted the more social-talk-and-drink-beer experience went for foot massages, while 3 of us opted for "hair wash."

I know that China will bring many unique and unexpected experiences; this is certainly the first, which I expect to revisit many times. For about $5 each, we stretched out on our backs on red plastic couches in a row. Our heads rested on small platforms suspended over wash basins and for the next half hour we drifted off into private reveries while we had shampoos and massages on our heads, neck, face and shoulders. After wrapping towels around our heads, covers were placed over the basins and the massage proceeded on arms and legs. We turned over and had our backs worked over, too. The final stage was in front of the stylists' mirrors, where they dried and styled our hair.

Back on the street, now dark at 6 :30, but still with no serious signs of the typhoon, I was ready to say goodnight to my new friends and go home, even though the group plans were continuing with dinner at someone's apartment. I went home for awhile and wrestled with my natural inclination to limit social interaction. I'm always reluctant to divide the world into "There are 2 kinds of people..." but in this case I think it's valid, so bear with me when I say there are those who will understand my hesitation and those who won't. You know who you are, and it may be an impossible task to explain to those in the opposite camp. This time I decided to push myself, so I walked down the street to buy a bottle of chardonnay from Chile and a big Cadbury's chocolate bar as my contribution to the group dinner.

Since I was the last one to leave at nearly midnight, it was clearly the right decision to make. I'm from a different generation than these women, and I've never had kids, yet our conversations were meaningful and connecting, and I'm very glad of the friendship. I'm reading a book called "The Art of Travel" by Alain de Botton, and he emphasizes the value of travel for taking oneself outside the realm of the ordinary and everyday. All of the teachers here know this intrinsically, and it gives us a shared foundation from which to begin, even if it's never talked about directly.

The typhoon veered and didn't hit Shekou, but it nonetheless shook up my usual perspective and blew in some fresh opportunities.