A Shanghai poster advertising massage, circa 1920
What you think of Shanghai – as an outsider anyway – is really down to your timing. If you happened to get in early, say pre-2005, you’d have encountered a commercial free-for-all where a huge marketplace in the city centre existed to supply you with next season’s Chloé bag, or a stellar version of one anyway, to go with your faux Uggs and pashmina (that was a look in 2005, if you recall). But then, you couldn’t find a jug of fresh milk from a four-legged mammal. In due course the intellectual property police pulled off a Chinese raid, meaning they directed all the dealers to a nondescript arcade uptown where the experience of shopping is now more like how Elvis must have felt wading through a swarm of teenage girls in the 1960s – only without the security detail.
If you pitched up before 2010, you probably would have heard whisperings about Dagu Lu, a dark boulevard near the spaghetti junction where lonely migrant bankers shopped the bounty of DVD shops for bootleg runs of Interview with the Vampire – or Intercourse with the Vampire, depending on how lonely they were. But those were spirited away too.
Fortunately, Shanghai landlords are nothing if not resourceful. At least one of them predicted that converting all those fluorescent-lit shopfronts into warrens of black-smocked masseuses who will rub you down for 90 minutes while you snack in front of a DVD (which can now be procured from the wagon pusher lurking on the corner) and chat to your friend in the next La-Z-Boy was just what the neighbourhood had been crying out for.
Why? Because I am one of those expats, have no cable TV, and the last time my husband gave me a massage I nearly lost two inches from my spine
I should add this is all above-board – though I’ll wager nobody would protest if you popped in your copy of Intercourse with the Vampire.
That landlord is now laughing all the way to the stash under his mattress – despite having rather naively imposed a price ceiling of twenty quid on treatments. Still, no fewer than nine copycats have crept onto Dagu Lu since the discovery of achy expats whose friends are all back in London losing their jobs, all looking for the best massage in Shanghai. Yes, these are happy endings – days, I mean, happy days for fans of the foot rub (and milk-drinkers, incidentally). More specifically, these are happy days for me. Why? Because I am one of those expats, have no cable TV, and the last time my husband gave me a massage I nearly lost two inches from my spine.
I heard about Taipan Foot Massage from a couple of old China hands (as in, they talk wistfully of the days when you could step out your door and into a Chloé handbag). And they reacted to my ignorance like I’d told them I was morally opposed to intellectual property infringement – because what would be the point of living in Shanghai?
‘Taipan’ means ‘big shot’ in the local Mandarin, and the first time I visited I felt like Liz Taylor in Cleopatra. In a good way. Here’s how it went: we arrived (I brought along the Mister, hoping osmosis works the same on the other side of the world) and were led into a small, warm den with a jumbo flatscreen and two deep leather massage chairs, where we removed our trousers, settled in and accepted a menu of fruit juices, noodle dishes, breads and some other stuff you probably wouldn’t want to hear about. Two fit young men in snug trousers entered with buckets of fragrant hot water for our feet and began work on our shoulders while we cued up Season 3 of Mad Men. We nibbled, Jon Hamm swilled whiskey, and the young men spent 85 minutes wringing our lower extremities of 20 years of shin splints. I’d put the experience somewhere between sex and married sex. The bill came to £27 for the two of us.
There is, as they say, something for everyone on Dagu Lu – as long as “everyone” doesn’t mind a strange Chinese bloke with one or more missing teeth addressing the tension in their “pectoral” region
I’ve clocked up some major hours in Taipan, ducking in for a cheeky half at lunchtime, booking the sitter in early, stumbling through the foyer after a stuffy dinner like it was a bawdyhouse run by Dolly Parton. So I suppose you could say I’m hooked.
But Taipan is no longer the only source of my fix. The Big Shot may have pioneered that dreamy formula of massage, TV and camaraderie, but as anyone with a Chloé on their arm could predict, he didn’t trademark it. Gradually I’ve stumbled through the foyers of other establishments, some more cheesey than big cheese. The creepily named Congen, for instance, is like an opium den with an iPod full of Muzak versions of Foreigner songs. Yet it – like the rest of the block now – has gone slightly off-message and expanded its menu to include the full body (though sooner or later you’ll end up with a thumb in your armpit). The practitioners get so into it, I once felt a drop of sweat splash onto the small of my back. But it was OK – it made the Muzak seem more powerful.
There is, as they say, something for everyone on Dagu Lu – as long as “everyone” doesn’t mind a strange Chinese bloke with one or more missing teeth addressing the tension in their “pectoral” region. You can get a tummy rub at Fino that basically does the job of a colonic irrigation without all the mess. Or you could plump for microdermabrasion at Skin City, though I’d never chance it. In the mood for a spirulina detox? At Dragonfly you can have one while four hands knead your arse to oblivion.
My heart belongs to the staff. They work harder than a sweet potato-peddling rickshaw driver – that’s a thing in Shanghai – and never laugh when you put on those paper bloomers they leave by the bed (the language barrier starts to seem very real the first time you encounter the bloomers). A practitioner at Damo Reflexology helped me with my Mandarin homework while I watched Taiwanese daytime drama with my ankles over his shoulders. A masseuse at Bamboo Massage was called Charlie Sheen! There are even blind men trained in dry acupressure, though I’ve always opted for the oily kind, where they wipe down your body afterward with a steaming cloth. Hard choices.
People talk about the 101st-floor observatory at the World Financial Centre like it’s the quintessential Shanghai tourist attraction, and, you know, it is tall. But Dagu Lu – home to the best massage in Shanghai – is also up there for me. It’s where you go after you’ve lost your lunch over the billion-dollar view, negotiated the broken pavements outside the wet market, refilled your stomach on dumplings, and dealt with the trauma that comes with crossing the street at rush hour. Then Dagu Lu is priceless.
Particularly if you get Charlie Sheen. If you do, tell him I sent you. C
Ellen Himelfarb is a London-based Canadian writer for CNN Travel; Wallpaper* and The Sunday Telegraph