Outside the Holiday Inn Lido there are a number of girls who will approach you and ask whether you'd like a massage, and I suspect the situation is the same all over Beijing. They approach you with a simple, "Excuse me?", explain that they give nice massages, offer you their business cards, and encourage you to call them. About half the time they will quote their basic rate which in February, 2005 was $8US (or 65RMB) per hour. Checking the hotel room rate cards, in-house hotel massages cost at least three times that and maybe more, and the girls I talked to in the hotel health club seemed less interested in making me so happy I'd be a repeat client. You can either arrange a time then, perhaps at an hour after dinner, or you can take their card and call them from your hotel room. Calling out to their mobile number was a simple matter of (as I recall) dialing 9 for an outside line and then their long mobile number. The conversation then included friendly noises on their end, since they spoke limited English, followed by the time and hotel room number repeated carefully two or three times.
I have called three of the girls I met out front (with several repeats for one girl) and I discovered that they all were skilled at massage. Contrast that with Shanghai where the girls gave a terrible experience and obviously knew nothing about the art. When Lucy, Helen, and Jennifer said they had been trained at some technical university in massage, I had to believe them. The massage was excellent in itself -- a perfectly good reason to call them for this 60-something American.
All of these girls encouraged me to call them at any hour of the day. In their limited English they tried to convey the idea that they knew my body-clock was on a time zone 9 hours away, so they would happily appear at 4:00am, or 9:00am, or 11:00pm, or anytime. The usual wait after I called was :15 to :20 minutes. I did call once at 6:00am and it took her nearly an hour to get there, but by then Helen was a favorite and I clearly did not mind. Beijing law does not permit any unregistered guest to enter the hotel and your room after 11:00pm so be sure to allow her enough time to arrive at 10:59pm or earlier. They can leave at any time unmolested by security, so a two hour massage creates no problems for them.
I showered and shaved and wore a bathrobe (nothing else) when the first girl arrived. A little uncertain whether a "technical masseuse" might object to sexual suggestions in a culture unfamiliar to me, I opened my robe and showed her I was not wearing pants and asked, "Okay?" She said, "OH YES! Much better massage. Okay. Man likes massage skin only." Whereupon I took off the robe and lay down nude on the bed, and positioned myself as she suggested. She asked if I preferred lotion, which of course I did, and she warmed up a bottle and went to work. I turned the room temperature up to max knowing that it is hard to get any Chinese room above 25 degrees C in the Winter, and I wanted to stay warm while nude, immobile and on the surface of the bed.
At first, unsure of the experience I might get and still smarting from a series of terrible, waste-of-time experiences in Shanghai, I said, "one hour." But less than :03 minutes into the massage I said, "Changed my mind: TWO hours now, please." It was well worth it.
For the aged, take Ibuprofen before hand. Although the massages are very well performed and fairly soft, my muscles still ached from even their light touching. A little NSAI made sleeping afterwards much better.
When the massage was nearly over she asked permission to stroke my front, so I nodded and smiled my approval. I have had happy endings that were very mechanical, but which I enjoyed nevertheless. She ran her fingertips very lightly all over my front, and inside my legs, cock, and balls. Her happy ending was nicely calibrated for a long, developing, building sensation followed by an explosive orgasm. (God bless the Beijing Technical University massage department curriculum!) One hint: tell her or gesture for her so she knows what you want, and teach her how to do you better. She can't read your mind but when I taught her what I liked, she relaxed and seemed to enjoy the experience of pleasuring me even more. She was NOT the slightest bit mechanical. I'll definitely be seeing Helen again, or maybe I'll try another.
There was no extra charge for the happy ending, but I paid her 300RMB anyway (which was $16US/130RMB for the basic massage plus an $20US/170RMB tip for the cheerful service). (She actually objected to the overpayment! Must be a Chinese thing. If you're into saving money pay her 200RMB which is the going rate plus a 30% tip, and you're still under $25US total on the expense account.)
Talking for a few minutes afterwards she tried to find the words to explain that men need the orgasm to be healthy; without the orgasm at the end, the man is left tired, unsatisified, and "unhealthy." You gotta like that attitude.
Keep a couple extra bottle of drinking water by the bedside table as the girls work hard and get thirsty. The girls were all moderately pretty in a Peoples' Republic sort of way, about 30-32 years old as a guess, and so far they remained dressed when they gave me my massage. (I suspect that the next time I see her I'll teach Helen the marvelous health benefits of nude body sliding ... so I got THAT going for me.)