Let your hair down and put your feet up

It is par for the course these days that flights never depart on time, but one hopes for the best. Getting to Beijing Airport and finding that my flight home was delayed by two hours was a dampener to the end of a hectic day. Ho hum. So how do you kill two hours? In Chinese airports it’s difficult – in fact impossible – to find shops selling any popular paper back novels, magazines or newspapers in English, or indeed any other foreign language.

Strolling around fast food restaurants and wandering up and down a line of shops selling top-of-the-range clothing, handbags and the usual overpriced tourist artefacts is not my cup of tea. Who in their right mind buys an expensive three-piece suit at an airport?

But Beijing does have something that is not found at airports in Europe or the USA – massage parlours. And – just to make it perfectly clear – they are all above board and strictly proper. This type of service is available at most of the larger airports in China.

On the second floor of the airport, near the restaurants, is the Beijing International Entertainment Center. The foot massage parlour is the pathway to total relaxation. In pampered luxury you get the foot washing and massage service with all mod cons. Choose the half-hour foot service at Yuan 80 (£8.50) and you are led to a comfortable lie-back chair, which your body weight activates into motion, and soon electrically warmed rollers are moving up and down your back. A young lady carried away my socks with a pair of tweezers and put them aside as though they might carry some form of plague, and then washed my ankles and feet. Every toe is cleaned, not just once but several times. It is bliss.

And – surprise, surprise – while you receive the foot treatment they sneak away your dusty shoes and return them fully cleaned and polished.

Tea and iced water are offered; alcohol is not served. If you want to have a beer, you can go next door to the restaurant, buy it and bring it back with you. The management is quite relaxed about that, accepting that travellers have their own ways and foibles.

Feeling very much better and in the mood for a little more pampering, I thought that a haircut would not go amiss. Conveniently situated next door is the De Luxe hairdresser. Here for another £5 you can have a ‘Wash cut and dry’ service.

The washing is done with you reclining on a bed (again the vibrating rollers up and down your spine) with your neck and head over a washbasin. And when they wash your hair, they really wash your hair – four times. As is de rigueur when you have a haircut in China, the washing is followed by much snapping of fingers against your temples. Just why they do this routine is rather a mystery; perhaps it is simply to keep you awake.

Hirsute chaps with beards, moustache or side-whiskers can have a shave or trim as well, and there is a wide range of services for ladies. The cost is quite low in western terms, though expensive when compared with normal street prices in Beijing. And it’s a lot better for you than fast food.

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