Do all bathhouses in northern China strip naked?

Today I want to talk to you about the bathhouses in the north.

My university is in a small city in Shanxi, part of the northern interior. The picture below is the water room of my university school. After bypassing the water room, you can reach the public bathhouse at the back.

Every morning after nine-thirty, the man responsible for heating hot water comes out of the small room on time, shovels a mountain of coal, and then enters the boiler room. Because at ten o'clock, the bathhouse will open.

The early opening hours of the bathhouse are from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Every time you take a bath, you have to pay seven yuan to the administrator, two of which are for the bathing fee, and the remaining five yuan is the locker key deposit. There is no time limit for bathing, just come out and get the 5 yuan deposit back.

First experience in the bathhouse

After I found out that the school’s bathing place was a public bathhouse, I was confused and pestered my roommate to go with me. My roommates are all from Shanxi. They don’t take baths very often and they all said they would go there in two days.

It was mid-September, during military training. Although the weather is getting colder in Changzhi, I still have to take a shower every other day due to habit. I listened to their advice and went to the bathhouse alone before two o'clock in the afternoon with a bath basket and two bags.

The door of the bathhouse is very small, and upon entering is the administrator's desk. On the desk are two large plastic jars filled with keys. There is a piece of white cloth hanging on the left hand side of the shielding door with the words "women's bath" written on it, and a white cloth hung in the same position on the right hand side with the words "men's bath" written on it.

I handed over the money, and the administrator familiarly took out a key from the plastic jar on her right and threw it on the table, saying "inside the corner." I grabbed the key and quickly slipped inside.

When I opened the door, I saw several naked girls taking a shower.

I was surprised. Unexpectedly, the public bathhouse has no cubicles! And every faucet is very close!

Oh my God! Should I take it off? Are you going to wash it today? It seems awkward to go out like this? Ah, what should I do? But here I am...

You ask me what happened in the end? Of course, he took off his clothes obediently like a lamb waiting to be slaughtered, found a place to wash them quickly.

Zhenzhen from Hubei, when talking about her first experience in a bathhouse, her feelings were very similar to mine.

“As a southern girl, of course I am shy? (ω)?”

“I didn’t know there was no small door at first, I thought it was just like the washing room in a swimming pool.”

"Just...pretend to be calm and blend in with the team"

"After taking a shower, I feel like it's nothing"

Social in the bathhouse

As a normal school where girls dominate half the sky, the school’s girls’ bathhouse is much more lively than the boys’ bathhouse. Ever since the news that "you can enter the bathhouse even if you go to the bathhouse in advance" spread throughout the academy, people started coming outside the bathhouse at 9:30 every morning. By 9:45, twenty or thirty people had gathered in the open space. Most of them are girls, and they don’t even queue up, they squeeze towards the door as hard as they can. One or two boys stood awkwardly in the distance, waiting to watch the sloppily dressed girls fight for the tap.

Boys may find it interesting that girls have to shamelessly grab the faucet in order to take a bath. But when you are crowded in a hot bathhouse with dozens or hundreds of people, and you have to watch dozens of people take a bath in embarrassment, and wait for more than half an hour or even longer, you know that you are thick-skinned. How important.

The bathhouse is no longer just a place to take a bath. People here, whether they are familiar or unfamiliar, strip off their outer shells and meet each other honestly. Joking is a matter of minutes, and pornographic jokes that are not usually spoken often pop up along with the jokes. Here, students from different places speak different flavors of Mandarin, chatting about the midterm exam assessment method, which department won first in the basketball game, what the club is doing, and the gossip coming from within the student union.

The bathhouse is also an important source of gossip. The graduation thesis of a certain department will be killed if you meet a certain professor; the elective course taught by teacher xx of a certain department is very interesting, you can take it next time; there will be a nine-day holiday during the National Day, etc. The connection between departments, in addition to student union and school-level activities, has also been infinitely sublimated in the bathhouse.

The back rub thing

I interviewed a fellow student from the same hometown, A-Dai, about his first experience in a bathhouse. He said:

"I'm looking forward to it before I go."

"When I was taking a shower, I even compared my penis with my roommate, from belly button to sole of feet, who has longer breasts, biceps, and ass?" Who else has thinner calves?"

"After going to the bathhouse, I felt that rubbing my back was so damn good. It unlocked new postures."

Speaking of back rubbing, this is simply an opening for students in the South. The door to the new world.

Northerners are accustomed to washing slowly and rubbing slowly when taking a bath. Not only do they not miss what they can, but they also rub each other's backs with those who travel with them. Regardless of boys or girls, there are special towels for bathing.

Baidu search for "bath towel", the explanation is as follows:

Bath towel, northern bathing artifact, pocket-shaped towel surface, frosted surface, viscose silk, sword Hemp, nylon, etc.

I have seen my roommate’s bath towel, and it’s really rough. When you rub your back, put your gloves in and rub it hard until the whole back turns red.

One time Liuliu and I went to take a shower together. After washing for a while, Liuliu came over.

"Fourth, would you like a back rub?" Liuliu looked at me with a smile, "It's very comfortable."

Then I had my first rub in my life. Back experience. It’s really cool.

Later, I talked with fellow villagers about taking a bath, and they all commented that "rubbing the back is very comfortable." When someone else helps you rub your back, the intensity and angle are better than rubbing your back with a towel, so everyone praises your back rub.

Bathhouse and People

People who come to the school bathhouse to bathe are not only students, but also aunts and grandmothers living in nearby communities.

When I go to take a shower at four or five in the afternoon, I often meet them. Women in their forties and fifties have their bodies deformed: their lower abdomens and bellies are bloated, and the fat on their thighs sways with every step. The breasts of women in their sixties no longer stand erect, and not only do they sag severely, but they also shrink severely.

You see, time is really merciless.

Because there are too many people, the capacity of the women’s bathhouse cannot meet the demand, and equipment problems often occur. During equipment maintenance, the men's and women's bathhouses will be temporarily changed. When we walk into a men's bathhouse, we can all feel the masculine atmosphere.

Sometimes we have to take a Bengbeng (electric car) and form a group to take a bath in South School. It is said that the bathhouse in South School has also been changed to a 3:1 space allocation, leaving the bulk to girls. Sometimes we would go to the Mechanical and Electrical School opposite the North School to wash, but the bathhouse there was very small and still couldn't meet the demand.

In fact, the waste in bathhouses is quite serious. I remember a roommate said before that it only took half an hour for me to take a shower. It was too fast and it was a bit of a loss.

I am very curious. Does it have to take an entire afternoon of washing and using up 2 yuan of water to be considered a loss? The earth’s resources cannot be calculated this way.

In our senior year, the school’s hot water system was finally reformed. The old era of 2 yuan with no time limit no longer exists. The school adopts a swipe card system, which calculates and automatically deducts payment based on water consumption, including hot water in the water room and bathhouse. Since then, I have discovered that everyone takes baths much faster...

Anyway, just like specialties and folk customs are to local cities, bathhouses are also a feature of the north. Southerners who have never experienced bathing in a bathhouse can not only experience the freezing of their hair after taking a shower in the dormitory in winter, but also feel the difference between the north and the south in this place. The bathhouse should be regarded as an interface for the north and the south to understand each other.