No respect for China's foot-massage workers

BEIJING — For farm wife Zhang Meiqing, the advice from her older brother seemed sage: Toiling in the rice paddies was fool's work, he said. Come to the city for a career of washing and rubbing people's feet — that's the path to riches.

So the 32-year-old mother left behind her village in southern Hainan province a year ago to join a wave of migrant laborers who make up one of the lowest rungs of urban China's new underclass: foot-massage workers.

Ten hours a day, her back aching, her fingers sore and calloused, Zhang hunches atop a tiny stool providing a humble service to a growing population of affluent Chinese.

Some men leer at her; women bark at her as though she were a servant. And many feet smell so rank, they bring tears to her eyes.

Her $40-a-week salary would be a substantial amount of money back in her village. On good days, she believes she provides a valuable service. More often, she's so ashamed of her job's demeaning reputation — nothing more than a subservient foot washer — she can't look at herself in the mirror.

"This is painful work," she said. "I think it's even harder than being in the fields."

Reflexology, the 5,000-year-old health treatment in which pressure to specific points of the foot is believed to cure or prevent disease, is big business in China. Countless salons have opened, and billboards promote the luxury and health benefits of a foot massage to foreigners and moneyed Chinese. Men, who account for most of the clientele, get a chance to have young women treat them like emperors.

In the late 1990s, a handful of salons employed only veteran technicians. Although those reflexology offices still operate, the therapy's new popularity has bred a growing number of less-reputable salons where undertrained employees labor under questionable conditions.

Most big-city foot-massage parlors employ young men and women lured from small towns and villages. Seeking to escape the boredom of rural life, they answer newspaper ads promising they can triple their incomes by massaging feet.

They are often disappointed. Most live in cramped, soulless dormitories with 30 or more workers.

Several newspaper investigations say the "herbal medicines" used to soak feet before a massage can be caustic to customers and workers. And they have questioned the training received by many workers — as few as two or three days — saying unskilled masseurs have hurt clients.

Zhang Hongjing, co-founder of the Chinese Reflexology Association, says there are 1,600 foot-massage salons each in Beijing and Shanghai, with three times that many with unlicensed technicians. She blames the government for the rash of substandard parlors popping up across China.

Wang Yi is among the new breed of foot-massage shop owners. A short, swarthy man who favors loud Western shirts and resembles a Chinese version of actor Joe Pesci, Wang got into the business two months ago.

He wanted to open a bar where men would pay to dance with pretty girls, but such places are not allowed in the capital, so Wang settled for foot massage. Although Wang acknowledged that foot massage is viewed primarily as a health regimen, he said it's also a way for his predominantly male clients to relax in the company of young women.

Many foot-massage salons feature male and female masseurs who wear hospital-like garb, but Wang employs young girls wearing heavy makeup and short black skirts.

"Most aren't tall or good-looking," he said. "They can't work as restaurant or bar hostesses. But they can earn just as much massaging feet."