Public Shower Experience - It's a Bit Long

So a friend of mine, Nathan, was talking to one of our Chinese language tutors and we discovered that many of the students shower in public showers (basically 100 naked girls or boys in one bathroom showering at the same time). We were actually shocked that something like that existed in such a modern city like Beijing. I suppose I failed to remember that Beijing is over-populated and space availability is a bit of a problem. Nathan, jokingly at first, had mentioned how we should experience these public showers for the cultural experience. After asking a million other questions about these public showers and some other apprehensions a typical foreigner would have, Nathan and I decided that we would actually be up to the personal challenge of trying out the public showers for ourselves. Two weeks later, today, I finally accompanied my roommate's tutor, Julie, to the showers.

I was very nervous before meeting her. I found my bright red, Victoria Secrets, travel bag and loaded it with my liquid soap, flip flops, facewash, shampoo, face products, my green lufa, two towels, and one pair of underwear. I was worried that I was bringing too many things and that I would come off like a typical materialistic American with my unnecessary produts. (Later I found out that everyone else used the same amount of products as I did, and I did not look out of place at all). On my walk over to the bathrooms I couldn't stop smiling from the embarrssment I was preparing myself for. I felt like a ten year old that was about to do something mischevious. Julie could not stop laughing at my facial expressions and reactions to something that I had not even experienced yet. I did assure her that my immature behaviour would vanish the moment we got to the public bathrooms and that I would take the experience in as a native would. And sure enough, it did.

The moment I walked in I saw naked women everywhere. We entered the locker rooms first and women were drying their hair, chatting, laughing, drying themselves, and getting dressed and undressed. The ratio of nakedness to dressed women in the locker room looked about 16:4 (naked:dressed). We found a locker and began getting undressed. While I may have appeared normal on the outside, my heart was racing while I began undressing. I actually was very nervous. Finally Julie and I were ready to walk to the showers. With nothing on and a basket with our products we both began walking down the long hallway of showers. The shower was one big hallway flanked by three big sections of mulitple shower heads. Women were showering everywhere and chatting as if they were hanging out on the streets. Nobody seemed to notice that they did not have any clothing on. It reminded me of gym class in America where all the girls would hang out and gossip about what was going on in their lives that week. We picked the last section of the left hand side of the hallway and used our ID cards, which had money on it, that allowed for us to receive water. We were charged .19 cents/minute for using the hot water. The moment hot water hit my body I became a native and forgot their was anything unusual about the experience. I was so happy that , at least, I had the luxury of a hot, steamy shower and found the pressure of the shower more enjoyable than the private bathroom I have at my apartment. I was even surprised that it did not phase me when one of the women showering stood in front of me and raised one of her legs up against the water heater so that she could start shaving and expose a more intimate side to her. After we were done showering I walked back to the locker rooms with no towel around myself. I think this was the most negative part of the experience. I was wet and water was dripping down from my hair and the closer the locker rooms got, the colder I began to feel. No one else had a towel either. The custom was to dry yourself with a small towel that you brought with you to the showers and then walk back with nothing shielding you from the cold back to the lockers so that you could get dressed. I did not have a small towel with me, I had a big towel by the lockers. I felt foolish drying myself with so much material while everyone else was content with barely a hand towel. I then got dressed and walked back to my apartment as if this were a daily routine activity for me.

After analyzing the experience, I decided that it was not so bad at all and I should not have been so worried about exposing myself so freely in the locker room. It was actually a very practial experience and kind of fun. I suppose socializing and showering is not that bad of a concept. So anyways....that was me living out every man's fantasy of 100 naked women showering together! haha! Don't really see what the hype is.