Foot Massages, Xi'an Bound!

There’s a foot massage parlor pretty close to the CNU campus we decided to try out Tuesday night. Massages in China are not like the ones you receive in the US. There’s a fine line between therapeutic stress relief and brutal torture, I think that line got crossed several times that night. If I’m ever in a war and forced to choose sides, I’m picking the one with the Asian masseuses. They may appear to be fragile little Chinese women, but their hand are like vise grips and they have deadly knowledge of all the body’s pressure points. The level of pain they can inflict on a single human being is astonishing. It was basically an hour and half of getting the crap beaten out of you and being kneaded like dough. But you feel surprisingly good and relaxed afterwards.

About to head to Xi’an in a few hours. Should be a pretty bad ass time. I’ll be sure to put up pictures. In the mean time, check out this article about my new hero:

HONG KONG (AP) - A German art student tried to join a Chinese dynasty's army - but he volunteered centuries too late. The 26-year-old man - identified only as Pablo or by his Chinese name Ma Lin - made a dusty brown suit of armour, a tunic and a helmet, and attempted to blend in with the ancient warriors of the terracotta army in the western city of Xi'an, the Hong Kong newspapers Ming Pao Daily News and Wen Wei Po reported this week.
The outfit matched the uniforms worn by the thousands of terracotta soldiers buried in the tomb of the Emperor Qin Shihuangdi, who ruled between 221 BC and 210 BC, the papers said. The soldiers - one of China's greatest archeological discoveries - are displayed in a Xi'an museum.
Pablo entered the museum Saturday with his uniform packed in a suitcase, the papers said. Once inside, he quickly changed into the outfit, jumped over a barrier and joined the soldiers, who stand in hundreds of rows.
He blended in so well that security guards had difficulty finding him, Ming Pao said.
"I got to the area where he was supposed to be, looked around a bit and didn't see Ma Lin," the paper quoted a guard as saying. "He just looked too much like a terracotta warrior."
The papers showed photos of security guards dragging Pablo out of the excavation pit where the soldiers are displayed.
Wen Wei Po quoted Pablo as saying he has been obsessed with the soldiers since his childhood. He reportedly said that he only planned to have a photo of himself taken standing near the museum's excavation pit.
"But when I saw the soldiers, I got too excited and just couldn't stop myself from jumping into the pit," he was quoted as saying.
Since he didn't damage the soldiers, Pablo was released after getting a lecture from the security officials, the papers said.