Scrubbing and bouncing between sleeps

The current issue of Gou-Rou.com's Government Throws Commuters a Lifeline made me giggle, but also reminded me of how many people in China do actually live at their place of work.

I didn't notice it when I first moved to Beijing; everything was so unfamiliar and there were so many people around all the time that it took a while before I began to figure out who was doing what where and when.

At one point I went at least once a week to an amazing Korean bathhouse (I never worked out why people called it 'Korean' - everyone who worked there were locals, as was its name, but all the signs were in Korean as well as Chinese).

The place was a revelation, a relatively inexpensive luxury comprising invigorating body scrubs, saunas, simultaneous head and foot massages, pedicures etc.

Because it didn't have gold-plated fittings and other tasteless flourishes it didn't attract masses of flash, swaggering newly-rich businessmen, and since it was slightly out of the way of the embassy district it seemed to be off the radar of most expats too. As such it made a comfortable, relaxing place to mix with ordinary (though not poor) Beijingers and inflict my atrocious Putonghua on the affable staff.

After visiting a few times as a post-taijiquan class/pre-dinner indulgence, and recalling that it was open 24 hours, I was inspired whilst drinking with a Chinese friend to suggest we went there as an end to our night out.

So, at around 4 in the morning we rolled up at the bathhouse, where the smiling workers took our shoes, led us to our lockers and offered to help us disrobe (I'm not joking, this was business as usual - and I admit that sometimes I let them).

After a quick shower, sauna and dip in the hot pool we asked to get the treasured cuo zao and qiao bei (an all-over scrub with mineral salts and lotion followed by a loud, wet massage involving a certain degree of slapping).

It was only when two of the stocky, fortysomething masseurs emerged from a side room rubbing their eyes that it hit home that we had woken them up, and that they appeared to be always there because they actually were always there.

It didn't seem to induce any bitterness on their part - and amidst their banter one of them established he used to work in a bathhouse on the same Chongqing road my friend had once lived on - but I never went back at a similar hour.

Another time, a German colleague who lived in the same complex as me said he'd accidently got off the elevator at the wrong basement level in my building, only to stumble on the rooms where our security guards slept.

There was a legion of these late teens/early twenties young men who stood at the doors and gates of our buildings every minute of the day, lost in long, quilted coats in winter but still bursting with grins most times we greeted them.

It was a jar to my naivety to realise they bunked in windowless rooms of the same building in which I enjoyed a spacious apartment that, though nothing special by Western standards, was palatial in comparison.

It was also pointed out to me that their accommodation was probably a huge improvement on what they had enjoyed before working in my complex, and definitely better than that of a great many others in the city.

Yet there was something about it all being in the same building - a too-literal representation of the socioeconomic hierarchy involved - that made it harder to accept.

Whilst it obviously involved a sizeable dose of not-very-useful liberal guilt, a lingering distaste remains...

Of course, I haven't lost any sleep over the sleeping arrangements or otherwise of the homeless people I step over on nearby Tottenham Court Road (and have as yet to give any change to as I do).