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Tuina Massage in Beijing, by Nicolette Vajk (1991)



            I had always dreamt of a journey to China. When I read in the
magazine “Massage” that it was possible to learn Tuina (Chinese Massage) in
China, I made inquiries as to which hospital offered this course. On my
first trip to China in 1991 with an organized tour, the guide arranged for
me to meet Dr. Liang, the head of the Tuina department at Guan An Men
Hospital in Beijing. Tuina is one of several branches of Chinese medicine,
a system of massage that follows the meridians, much in the same way as
acupuncture does, and which focuses on achieving a balance between the Yin
and Yang forces in the body.


           Dr. Liang encouraged me to return to Guan An Men to study
Tuina for three weeks. He explained that this would primarily be an
introduction to Chinese medicine, with a focus on massage, and I hoped it
would help me gain a deeper understanding of the principles of healing and
enhance my own practice of Thai massage in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S.A.). While
both Thai and Tuina massage follow the meridians, there were three
differences that I was aware of: (1) the Thai meridians are somewhat
different from the Chinese ones, (2) the stretching and pressure of Thai
massage is more like Yoga and Shiatsu combined, whereas Tuina is more like
acupuncture — it is about knowing which specific point to apply a
particular manipulation to, and (3) the basic Thai massage that I practice
promotes health and energy overall, whereas Tuina is designed to treat
specific problems.


            “I will pick you up at the airport. The hospital is far from
the airport, and many taxi drivers do not find it.” Dr. Liang remarked as
he walked me back to meet my group. I decided to take the course that he
was suggesting and we agreed that I would return within the year.


            Six months later, I was back on a flight to Beijing. I sent
Dr. Liang a fax one week before I left to inform him of my flight
schedule, but was not sure whether he had received it. I started my trip a
little anxious, yet confident that things would work out. When I arrived in
Beijing, there was no placard with my name on it. I started to panic. I
went to the information counter and asked: “Do you speak English?”


            “Meyo, meyo.” (“No, no.”). This was a word I would hear a
thousand times during my stay in China.


            “But it says ‘Information’ up here,” I said as I pointed to the
sign.


            “Meyo, meyo!”


            “Where can I get information?”


            “MEYO! MEYO! MEYO!”


            Finally, a man next to us pointed to the ceiling, indicating
that I should go upstairs.


            I found another information counter with an attendant who
seemed to understand my question better. Relieved, I showed her Dr.
Liang’s business card. I told her that I needed to call him but could not
speak Chinese. She dialed the number a few times before she got through to
talk to someone. She hung up and dialed again. After a few more attempts,
she told me that the number on the card was incorrect. How could this be? I
looked again at the envelope Dr. Liang had sent to me. There were three
phone numbers on it.


            “Please try all the numbers, even the fax number.”


            Finally, the woman got through on one of the numbers and handed
me the phone. It was Dr. Liang’s secretary. She told me that they didn’t
have a car to pick me up and that I would have to take a taxi. I had a
brochure from the hospital written in Chinese which I showed to the clerk
at the transportation counter. She said the fare would be eight Yuan
($1.50). Could the taxi fare really be that low? When I went outside, I was
directed to a bus. The driver was closing the luggage compartment and
getting ready to leave. I ran over and got the last seat on the bus. I
noticed that I was the only foreign passenger on the bus, and felt rather
uneasy.


            It took an hour to get into town, with a few stops on the way.
We drove past the Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden City — “The Hidden
Palace”, as my guide had called it. I waved my brochure trying to get
someone’s attention and a gentleman looked at it and questioned the bus
driver. He told me that I should get off at the last stop.


            When I got off, a few men tried to help me with my suitcase. I
turned to the one who seemed to be in charge and showed him my brochure. He
assigned me to a bicycle rickshaw rider who took me to the hospital and
asked for fifty Yuan ($10.00). I knew he was overcharging me but I did not
have the energy to go through my phrase book to argue with him. He took the
bill out of my hand and disappeared.


            I presented Dr. Liang’s card to the men at the entrance.
They mimed that they were going to telephone him and asked me to have a
seat.


            When Dr. Liang came to greet me he was not sure whether I was
the same person he had met before. On our first encounter, I was more
casually dressed, and wore no make-up. When he heard that I was a flight
attendant, he exclaimed, “But in China, the air hostesses are very
beautiful!” (And I thought doctors were supposed to be intelligent!)

            I had read some Chinese novels which described the Chinese
perception of Caucasian foreigners: they were ugly because they had a big
nose, round eyes and fire-colored hair. I later read an article by Andrew
Brown (The Globe and Mail, Toronto, May 2, 1992) that mentioned Air China’s
recruitment problems: “They demanded that trainee flight attendants be
chaste and have no smelly armpits. Surprisingly, there is no rule against
flight attendants dating, marrying and having children after they are hired
and trained. Until then they are expected to look like cover girls and live
like nuns. Also pimples, warts, moles, dark skin, squints, scars and bad
breath are out.” My beauty mark alone would have excluded me from Air
China.


            We walked through the hospital. There were patients everywhere,
sitting on the benches in the hallway. The aroma of Moxa tickled my nose;
it reminded me of marijuana. Moxa looks like a big cigar. It is made of
packed herbs and smokes like an incense stick when lit. The doctors use it
to warm specific pressure points of the body. On certain major points they
will light a Moxa cone and let it burn down until it burns the skin and
leaves a permanent scar. It is believed to have a strong therapeutic
effect.


            In the excitement I had forgotten that I had been traveling for
over thirty hours. I had to find a hotel and be ready to begin my training
the next day. Dr. Liang accompanied me to the Chengdu Hotel, but there
were no rooms available because of a convention. Dr. Liang insisted that
they should find me a room and after fifteen minutes they did.


            The room was on the fifth floor. Because they did not have a
key for me, I had to ask the guards to open and lock my door. Sometimes the
elevator would not work and the entrance from the staircase to my floor was
locked. My room was near the elevator but the keys were at the other end of
the hall — getting to my room became a daily expedition.


            The bathroom floor needed mopping, the carpet needed vacuuming
and the sheets had many spots on them, even though they had obviously been
laundered. The toilet did not flush well and they would have to unclog it
every morning. After I’d been there for one week, they still had not mopped
the bathroom floor or vacuumed the carpet. But they had given me two
toothbrushes, two soaps and two bags of jasmine tea every day. I only used
the soap and the rest just piled up on the television where I stored it. I
called one of the girls to my room and showed her the “Please clean my
room” sign. She looked puzzled. I took her into the bathroom and mimed
mopping the floor. Her face lit up, “Yes, yes!” — This was the only English
word that everyone I met during my trip knew. I took her to the carpet and
pretended to vacuum, imitating the sound of the vacuum cleaner. She clearly
understood. I thanked her and that evening I came home to a clean room.


            I had to get a bicycle. The director of my unit generously let
me borrow hers instead of buying one and reselling it at the end of my
stay. Every morning I rode two kilometers through the market street, where
the vendors sold their fruit and vegetables as well as pots and pans,
noodle soup, dumplings and steamed bread. Older women used baby carts to
carry their groceries — young mothers used them to carry their babies and
the food.


            One morning I witnessed a traffic jam at an intersection. It
was so congested that not even the pedestrians could move. The cars were
the first to get stuck. The cyclists behind them wanted to pass and ended
up jamming both sides of the road. The bikes were perpendicular to one
another and no one could move. After an immobilization of about twenty
minutes the cyclists managed to loosen up the jam a little by turning into
a side street. I forced my way across the road by giving dirty looks to
everyone in my way and they actually let me through.


            I soon settled into a routine at the hospital. I met the
doctors in the Tuina Department: there were six of them of them, on
different shifts and with different responsibilities and areas of
expertise. I was the only foreign student in the Tuina department during
the three weeks that I was there — two Austrian students were studying in
the Acupuncture department and a group of a dozen students from Australia
was studying in the Physiotherapy department. It is my understanding that
most hospitals in China are teaching hospitals, and the staff seemed quite
comfortable teaching us with the help of translators. Dr. Liang assigned
a translator to accompany me throughout my lectures and observations each
day from 9:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. The patients who came to the hospital had
mostly neck pain, lower back pain and knee problems. I had wanted to study
internal diseases. When they asked me for a list of lectures I wanted to
have, I told them I wanted to learn how to treat common ailments like a
cold, fever, sore throat, headache or digestive problems. However, they
enrolled me in lectures on cervical spondylosis (a bone spur in the neck),
lumbar pain and lumbar disc, knee arthritis, tennis elbow — all of which
have proven useful in my massage practice.


           Dr. Li, who had been absent in the beginning, came back
during the third week of my training. She had been dancing for a television
program. I later learned that she had wanted to be a dancer, but her father
had made her go to medical school. I could not quite figure out what she
thought of me. She grabbed my hands, looked at them and walked away. I
noticed my nails were too long. My translator told me that Dr. Li thought
my hands were better suited for playing the violin. I felt that she
disapproved of me. But that afternoon, after she gave me a lesson, my
translator said that Dr. Li liked me, especially my yellow hair: she
wanted to cut it off and wear it herself!


            Even though I had a translator, this did not necessarily mean I
understood every detail of the conversation. I once asked, “When you tell
me to work on a certain point, is it because you decided that it worked, or
because your teacher taught you to?” —there seemed to be some disagreement
on the treatment. The translator talked with the doctor for about two
minutes, while the doctor was showing one pressure point on my leg, then
another, and finally she said “No”.


            “No what?” I asked.


            “No teacher, personal experience.”


            I wished I could have understood all the discussion in between.


            When I started my Tuina massage training Dr. Wu demonstrated
various manipulation techniques. The most difficult ones were the rolling
and the one finger meditation. Dr. Wu was very strict with me, he would
not let me do anything halfway, I had to do it perfectly. Every time I
tried he would shake his head and tell me I was doing it wrong. I was
supposed to relax my wrist, elbow, arm and shoulder. The strength was to
come from my waist — “vist” as he would say — which was easier said than
done.


            Every morning Dr. Wu would ask me if I had been practicing,
but I did not have anyone to practice on. After two weeks of trying the
rolling technique, Dr. Wu finally told me I had made some progress — he
told me I was doing better than any foreigner. I still felt I was far from
doing it right. As for the one finger meditation, I will know I’m doing it
right when I can massage for fifteen minutes without getting tired. One of
the patients told me to study Qigong (chi gong) which would help me in my
massage technique and to build my strength. Qigong is a Chinese exercise
based on breathing, meditating and visualizing the energy flow through the
body. It helps to improve one’s health and mental well-being. At a more
advanced stage, Qigong can be used to heal others by projecting external Qi
(Chi: energy).


            Dr. Wu showed me some exercises that he practiced each
morning in the park. I went with him every day from six to eight A.M., to
participate in this wonderful Chinese tradition, always set in a quiet,
agreeable and beautiful environment. People practice Tai Chi, Qigong, Wushu
(Kung Fu), dancing with sword or fan, ballroom dancing, playing musical
instruments and singing.


            One morning, a girl was singing Peking Opera facing the lake.
Behind her was an older man stretching his hamstrings with his foot up
against a tree trunk. He was imitating her singing. It seemed as though he
did not appreciate Peking Opera. An American woman once told me that
Chinese singing sounded like cats mating and the music sounded like her
nieces playing with the pots and pans. Peking Opera is losing its appeal
for the younger Chinese generation, but the older people still enjoy it.


            Another custom is for older men to take their birds to the
park. They meet their friends there, hang the bird cages in the trees, take

the blue covers off and the birds sing to each other. Meanwhile, their
owners sit on benches, drink cha (tea) and chat. The birds also get their
morning exercise: each owner swings his cage back and forth while the birds
flap their wings and contract their feet so as not to fall off the stick.
The birds seem to appreciate the attention.


            The Chinese have some strange remedies. An Australian student
in the orthopedic department had a sore throat and was given a concoction
of flowers which looked like a potpourri in hot water. I once tried a
Chinese herb remedy for a cold. It tasted sweet but it smelled like burnt
hair. A patient in the Acupuncture department was suffering from an atrophy
of the optic nerve, which could make her go blind. They were giving her a
Moxa treatment using a pair of glasses with walnut shells in the center of
the frame. The shells had been soaked in an extract of chrysanthemum
solution. Sticks of Moxa were lit in front of them, and the smoke went
through the shell, into the eye and finally to the optic nerve. At least
that is what I understood. After the Moxa treatment, which she had every
day, the patient got up to leave, but the acupuncture doctor had not
finished. He stuck a needle through her temple and twisted it back and
forth behind her forehead. The girl was holding back her screams — she was
brave.


            Another patient, who had a spinal problem, was getting a hot
cup treatment. The doctor poked the point located between the seventh
cervical and the first thoracic vertebrae, which is called the DU 14. A cup
was heated with a flame and placed over the spot. The skin under the cup
swelled up and blood came out. The patient had to sit on the bed for about
fifteen minutes as she also had needles in her hands, legs and feet. They
took off the cup and casually wiped off the blood. My interpreter was
almost sick. After taking out the needles, the doctor put other needles
into the underside of the patient’s tongue and wriggled them around. He
looked up and grinned at me when he saw my face.


            “What do you think of acupuncture?” he asked.


            It was too much for me to handle. I would stick with Tuina
massage which, to me, seemed a gentler manipulation.


            In the orthopedic department, they did not operate on broken
arms and legs. They put the patients under anesthesia and, under traction,
pushed the bones back in place — no worry about infections and scars.
Hearing about it was enough for me and I did not feel I needed to witness
the procedure. One patient had dislocated her knee by falling in a hole and
an Australian student told me she was about to go into shock. I asked why
they were not laying her down. The answer was: “The Chinese have a higher
tolerance for pain.”


            A Japanese man had an infection in his hand. He had fallen on a
stick three weeks before and still had pain. The doctor stuck some gauze,
which had been soaked in a red solution, into his hand. A couple of days
later, when he took out the gauze, a splint an inch long came out with it.
The hand healed quickly after that. To treat a sprained foot, they wrapped
it in a muddy-looking herb mixture to promote circulation and reduce the
swelling. After the swelling had gone down, they massaged the foot to
accelerate the healing. The foot massage looked so painful that I would
have needed a handkerchief in my mouth to choke the screams.


            At least the children cried without shame, even if it did not
hurt: a little girl burst into tears when the doctor approached her with
scissors to cut off her “cast” — it was a plastered bandage wrapped around
a couple of bent sticks, the latter wrapped with tape.


            Tuina massage on babies was very gentle. For a cold, they used
one finger to rub the outside of the child’s arm from the wrist to the
elbow. This manipulation had a warming effect. For a fever, they rubbed the
forearm on the palm side from the elbow to the wrist. This directed the
excess heat out of the body. For constipation, they rubbed the thumb. This
stimulated the lung meridian which is associated with the large intestine.
Tuina worked marvels on infants — they generally healed quickly. I found
that observing the treatment of infants was the most effective learning
method during the three weeks I studied at the hospital: young children do
not have the physical and emotional history of chronic illness or trauma
that we develop throughout our lives and they respond positively to the
simplest forms of massage.


            Photographing Chinese children was always a delight. They were
so cute and their parents and grandparents were so proud of them that they
felt honored whenever I asked to take their pictures. It was a challenge to
photograph toddlers wearing split pants instead of diapers — these pants
allow them to squat whenever something needs to come out: no diapers, no
toilet training. I saw a tourist trying to photograph a little boy’s
bottom. The mother turned the little boy around so that the tourist could
take a picture of his face. She did not seem to understand the intention of
the photographer, who was constantly trying to get behind the child. On
another occasion, a woman was carrying a toddler in her arms. When she saw
my camera, she showed it to her son, who turned his face towards me and I
managed to get his little bottom and his face in the photo at the same
time.


            As soon as the children are old enough to sit up, they ride the
bicycles with their parents in little bamboo chairs. Chinese children are
so calm and still that there does not seem to be any risk of them falling
off. They just hold on and stare at all the curiosities that they pass.
Sometimes the whole family sat on one bicycle: the child in front, the
father on the seat and the mother in the back sitting like an Amazon. This
was illegal — an Austrian student got into trouble with a policeman for
riding on the luggage rack of a bicycle. He was just following the example
of the locals.


            The language barriers could sometimes be challenging. One day,
Peter, a fellow student from Austria, and I were shopping and found
ourselves in a situation where the salesgirl had to explain in three
different ways the price of what we were buying, to no avail. She did not
use the same money names as the phrase book. The bills say “Yuan” and
“Jiao”, but the people say “Kwai” and “Mao”. She tried to show us with her
fingers, but since the Chinese count from one to ten with only one hand,
the fingers do not mean the same as when we do it. Then she tried to show
us on the bead counter: no luck, we still did not understand. Finally, she
wrote it down on the table in Arabic numbers. I decided I would have to
learn to count in Chinese, which made my shopping a lot easier.


            The culinary experience was probably the most enjoyable.
Peter was a vegetarian and he was adventurous enough to try anything that
did not have meat. One day we saw some half-circle shaped pink bits fried
in oil which we were unable to identify. We asked if it was meat. “Meyo,”
came the answer. Maybe it was fruit? “Meyo.” I showed them the vegetable
section of my phrase book: “Meyo.” They grabbed my book and looked through
it briefly, but shook their heads. Since it was not meat, we ordered some.
From the taste, we thought that it was made from corn flour. We also tried
“Fried Mice” (donuts), sugarcoated bananas, peanut pastries, blood-rice
pudding, steamed and fried dumplings. My favorite dish was noodles,
especially if they were fresh. The cook would take a piece of dough,
stretch it, bring the two ends together, stretch, bring the ends together,
stretch, until the noodles were of the desired diameter. Then he threw them
in boiling water. Thirty seconds later, the noodles were cooked and
drained. The cook added a cilantro broth to the noodles, and the soup was
ready to eat. I had it every morning for breakfast.


           Peter found a couple of vegetarian restaurants and we had a
lot of fun reading their menus. Not only were the titles creative, so were
the food substitution and presentation. Some examples were Swallow’s Nest,
Sunrise on the Mountain, Red Lantern, Roast Duck — no meat, Scallops with
Vegetables — no seafood, Fried Eel — no eel. Every time we chose an item on
the menu, they were out of it. We asked them to recommend something. That
gave us a chance to eat some dishes that we would normally not choose. They
also served a red juice that we could not identify: it was not in our
phrase book. It turned out to be haw juice, made from Hawthorn, a thorny
shrub of the rose family with flowers and small red fruit. This nectar was
sometimes mixed with asparagus or carrot juice.


            Thanks to my phrase book, I got around pretty well with the
addition of sign language. But when I tried to read something out of the
book, I got into trouble. Because I could count, they assumed I could speak
Chinese, and they would rattle on. I would say “Wo bu hui shuo han-yu” (I
do not speak Chinese). I think I was saying it close to right because they
repeated it, but then they went on: “Ni lai zheryou duo-jiu le? Ni-men zai
zher guo-de yu-kuai ma? Ni shi cong nar lai de?” I was helpless, I could
not answer, and all I could say was: “Xiexie, zai-jian” (Thank you,
good-bye). They just continued speaking and smiling.