September 16, 2007
By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK
ALONG the Shanghai street, choking haze draped the buildings and gridlocked traffic like a damp blanket. Vendors screamed out prices for water and postcards, and pedestrians hacked into handkerchiefs and covered their faces with masks. Construction workers in torn, dirty jeans bored a hole into the sidewalk, geysering dirt everywhere.
But inside Three on the Bund, overlooking this chaos from a restored 1916 structure that once housed the Mercantile Bank of India, China's urgency and insanity seemed far away. In the cavernous front room of the Evian Spa by Three, which rises several stories and lets in beams of light from its portholelike windows, the only noise was the tinkling of soft music. Spa attendants led guests past polished wood Chinese sculptures and into private rooms, where they could wallow in giant bathtubs and choose from an exhaustive menu of rubs and facials.
Ten or even five years ago, China boasted few spas that could compete with those of Thailand, Indonesia or other famous relaxation hubs. Visitors to the country, and Chinese themselves traveling for the first time, generally sought out the country's best-known cultural attractions, sparing little time for some pampering. China certainly had its own spa tradition — reflexology parlors dotted city streets — but most traditional massage places were simple affairs or, occasionally, fronts for prostitution. Many of the country's hotels, still struggling to overcome the legacy of socialism, had not exactly mastered the art of relaxation.
But times have changed: Chinese spas, sensing the potential of the relaxation market, are giving themselves a makeover, upgrading their services so they can compete with the finest health resorts in Asia. As the Chinese themselves have become travelers — China is becoming one of the largest sources of tourists in the world — they are demanding higher standards of service. With disposable income in upscale eastern cities, Chinese tourists and business travelers now have cash for indulging themselves. And since China features crowds, pollution and fierce traffic, Chinese travelers and foreign tourists often find spas essential to surviving the intense pace of life.
Luxury hotels have opened some of the classier spas in China. In Lijiang, a Unesco World Heritage site in the southwest that could be a poster for classical China, with its old town of cobblestone streets, bridges and houses, Banyan Tree has opened a spa. Near the Great Wall at a complex designed by 12 leading Asian architects, Anantara set its own spa, while Marriott built a spa retreat, called Quan, on Sanya, a tropical resort in the south of Hainan Island. St. Regis even plans to open an upscale hotel in remote Lhasa, complete with a spa.
But in recent years, smaller boutique spas have sprung up across the country as well. “They don't just explore Western things, though, they are interested in exploring Chinese elements as well,” said P. T. Black of Jigsaw International, a Shanghai-based market research firm. “Traditional medicines and technique — from cupping to wolfberries — are playing an important part of the spa experience.” (Cupping involves placing heated glass cups on the skin to extract toxins; wolfberries are said to bolster the immune system and enhance circulation.)
Rather than just depending on Western experts, then, many new Chinese spas incorporate local elements. In Beijing, Zenspa has built its rooms and massage tables in a traditional-style house, whose interior courtyard naturally filters out much of the noise from outside, which is important in a city that makes Los Angeles seem like a driver's paradise.
Inside Dragonfly, a Chinese spa chain, designers have blended stone and traditional dark wood, paying homage to classic Chinese homes. Often open until the wee hours, Dragonfly offers many of the same massages as hotel spas at far lower prices, so it draws Chinese visitors. At a Dragonfly spa in Shanghai's old French concession, middle-age Chinese women with bouffant dos line up for facials next to punky-looking Shanghai teenagers with spiky hair.
Spas in China can draw on millenniums of sophisticated Chinese medicine, which includes cupping, acupressure and many other treatments to improve blood circulation and yin-yang equilibrium. At Chi, a spa at the Pudong Shangri-La hotel in Shanghai, guests can fill out a questionnaire that helps figure out their Chinese element: metal, fire, wood, water or earth. Chi's spa therapists then help guide treatments depending on which elements dominate. (Relying on elements also could encourage repeat business; your element makeup can change, so you would have to return.)
Like several other Chinese spas, Chi uses traditional Tibetan elements. It uses tsampa, a kind of roasted barley flour, in one rubdown and offers another Himalayan treatment involving hot stones heated in oil. The masseuse uses the oiled stones to apply deep pressure, and sometimes leaves the stones on parts of the patient's body because the heated rock supposedly can improve the flow of energy.
Banyan Tree's Shanghai spa also tries to use traditional products, focusing on incorporating local herbs like ginseng into treatments. Hard-core Chinese medicine enthusiasts have even built an entire traditional medicine theme park in Zhuhai, a city in southern China near Macao. At the Zhuhai Chinese Medicine Valley, visitors can soak in pools filled with tea, milk or Chinese herbs.
In one of the stranger new attempts, the Jiaosu Spa in Shanghai offers a treatment based on dust from juniper wood and rice husks. Mixed with enzymes and live bacteria, the dust turns into a hot, dry dirt bath, like the ultimate summer sandbox. Guests sink their bodies into the dirt pit, and spa attendants use a kind of shovel to cover them with this mix of earth. Though one might wonder whether someone who spends days slugging through Shanghai's sooty air wants to rinse off with dirt, supposedly by sinking into this hot pit spagoers can elevate their metabolism, cleanse their skin and even bolster their immunities to diseases.
As they move upscale, many Chinese spas are even addressing their biggest failing, finding staff members who can emulate the grace and warmth of Thais and Indonesians. Some still struggle, but at the most upscale, like Evian, spagoers could easily imagine themselves luxuriating in Phuket or Bali. At least until they go outside again.
VISITOR INFORMATION: TOUCH OF THE EAST
The Banyan Tree Shanghai is at the Westin Shanghai (Bund Center, 88 Henan Central Road; 86-21-6335-1888; www.banyantreespa.com/shanghai). Massages begin at 780 yuan, or about $100 at 7.7 yuan to the dollar; longer treatments cost up to 2,100 yuan.
Massages at Chi at the Pudong Shangri-La (33 Fu Cheng Road, Pudong, Shanghai; 86-21-5877-1503; www.shangri-la.com/en/property/shanghai/pudongshangrila) start at 630 yuan for an hourlong foot massage, with other treatments up to 2,280 yuan.
The spa chain Dragonfly (www.dragonfly.net.cn), with several locations in China, has massages from 65 yuan for a half-hour head-and-shoulder treatment up to 1,288 yuan.
Evian Spa by Three (Three on the Bund, Shanghai; 86-21-6321-6622; www.threeonthebund.com) has a 45-minute foot massage for 400 yuan and longer treatments costing up to 1,600 yuan.
A dust bath at the Jiaosu Spa in the Xinyuan Hotel (1900 Hongqiao Road, Shanghai; 86-21-6242-6688) is 298 yuan.
At Zenspa (House 1, 8A Xiaowuji Road, Chaoyang, Beijing; 86-10-8731-2530; www.zenspa.com.cn) treatments start at 450 yuan for a one-hour Swedish massage, with longer sessions up to 3,680 yuan.
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