I work as a "skinny" in a Macau sauna: I only serve male guests

My name is Li Shishi, from Jiangxi, 28 years old, an ordinary girl from the lower class. I work as a masseur in a sauna club in Macau, also known as a physiotherapist, sauna technician, and the locals call me "bone massage girl" or "bone sister". Some people say that Macau is a paradise for men and a bank for women, but behind the prosperity, every industry actually has unspeakable sadness.

The Macau sauna industry is not an independent industry, it is closely related to the Macau casino. Many of the male guests we have received in those years have just come out of the casino. When the red and blue brothers are in love, they will come to the sauna to relax and get rid of fatigue. When they are in love, they will also come to the sauna to cool down and calm down. Just like the pawnshop in Macau, it mainly serves the red and blue brothers. When the brothers are in love, they will go to the pawnshop to shop and choose a watch for themselves.

When they are in love, they will also go to the pawnshop to pawn their watches, or exchange them for a boat ticket home, or continue to "fight" in the casino. Therefore, the neon signs on the streets of Macau are either of pawn shops or saunas, and their main purpose is to be "eye-catching".



01 Making a living in Macau

I am not a local in Macau. There are not many locals who work as sauna technicians. This line of work is physical and technical, and the money earned is hard-earned. Women in Macau prefer to work as casino dealers, public relations, even salesgirls, currency exchange, real estate agents and other professions.

Our sauna club is close to the casino, about a few minutes' drive. The place where I rented a house is about 30 minutes away from the club. I walk to and from work every day. Unless it rains, I will take the free shuttle bus in Macau. I work in Macau with a work visa, that is, a blue card. At that time, the number of mainlanders working in Macau reached tens of thousands at the peak.

Although I can enter and exit the port and return to Zhuhai at any time, the sauna club is open 24 hours a day, and I cannot choose to rent a cheaper house in Zhuhai. The income of being a bone girl in Macau is not high. The basic salary is about 11,000 Macau patacas. Of course, there will be commissions, bonuses, tips...

With frugality, the money I can remit home every month is less than 10,000, and this is based on the premise of paying 13 months of salary a year. However, I don’t remit money home every month. I will wait for the exchange rate to be high and remit it all at once. After all, our salary is paid in Portuguese paper. For this reason, I also met some fellow villagers from Jiangxi. Some of them do currency exchange here and can always provide me with some reference opinions.

Why do you want to make a living in Macau?

In order to make more money, build a house in my hometown, and make it easier for my brother to find a wife in the village in the future. In order to come to Macau to work smoothly, I found a labor agency. The first month was considered to be in vain, and I paid labor fees and agency fees. However, Fangfang, who came with me at the beginning, left before she passed the probation period because her skills did not pass the assessment of the training teacher. The final result is that the agency fee is not refundable, but the labor fee can be refunded.

Therefore, those who come to Macau to work must ask themselves in advance whether they can stick to it, after all, the agency fee is thousands of dollars. If you want to save the agency fee, you can ask your friends in Macau to help you find a job, or apply for a pass and find an employer yourself. Macau is the same as Hong Kong. As long as you are hardworking and willing to work, you can always make money, except for working hard at the poker table in the casino.



02 Macau sauna industry is a job for young people

Macau Bone Girl also has an 8-hour shift system, so many of our colleagues often don’t meet each other. The club provides working meals, so there is no need to bring lunch boxes. We have 4 days off a month, and sometimes we go to Zhuhai to play. In the sauna and massage industry, it is reasonable that the more sophisticated the massage techniques are, the more likely they are to be liked by customers, but Macau sauna is not like that. Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, and the sauna industry is no exception.

At the beginning, the old employees here didn’t pay much attention to the newcomers, especially No. 18, who was an excellent employee and was not willing to teach us. But I also met my good sister here-Xiao Yao, who treated me as a sister and shared everything with me, but later I lost her.

At that time, Xiao Yao and I were both newcomers. We were inseparable, and we could also explore the techniques ourselves, consult the training teachers, and make progress together. Although they are all massages, the techniques and processes are still different from those in the mainland. Generally speaking, Macau sauna clubs only recruit masseurs with more than one year of work experience. If a person has no work experience but is good-looking, the company can provide free training before he or she can start working.



They are basically female therapists. There are male therapists, but they are rare. In addition, they are required to be sunny and energetic, have no bad records, and have tattoos. They must be fluent in Mandarin and speak simple Cantonese and English to ensure basic communication with customers. I am already 28 years old. It is almost difficult to recruit masseurs over 40. I only have a few years to fight for it.

Because of this, the turnover rate in our industry is very high. They are either fired by complaints from customers, or resign and change careers or go home. Some of the younger and more beautiful colleagues think that the salary is too low, and they don’t want to endure the hardship, nor do they want to compete with old colleagues for customers. They were changed by the foreign land of Macau, and later joined the Paris Tower Guarding Team, charging 1,500 yuan per time.

In the process of giving customers pure massage, there are still cases of being "taken advantage of", and some customers ask us out on the street. We cannot screen the quality of customers. It is the customers who choose us, and then the manager arranges us to work. If we don’t work, then we won’t call you next time. We can only kindly remind the guests to be careful. If the guests get worse, we can only call the manager to coordinate. We are here to massage the bones properly. If you want to massage the "evil bones", sorry, please turn right when you leave.



03 Macau saunas are not "cheating"

There are many leisure clubs in Macau. Those who have been to Macau know that Macau saunas are all licensed and there is no unlicensed operation. In other words, all services in Macau saunas are carried out in accordance with local laws. There is no "stepping on thunder", and it cannot be said that it is a conscientious enterprise. In other words, there is no overcharging in Macau saunas, no forced buying and selling, and if you don't choose the therapist you like, you can leave at any time.

If forced consumption is discovered once, the license will be revoked and a fine will be imposed, so it is necessary to ensure that the consumption environment of the guests is safe. Not only that, Macau saunas will also cooperate with hotels. If guests want to come to the sauna, our club will arrange a special car to pick them up with a phone call. There are also some local taxi drivers who will help us to pull business. If the guests consume, they will also waive the fare. Of course, they can also get a rebate for the introduction.

Some Macau saunas are indeed very famous, and the sauna club I am in is not even in the top 10. There are foot bath shops, water therapy shops, SPAs, and massage shops in Macau. Saunas are more like a collection of them, offering basically all the items. However, most sauna clubs only accept male guests.



Female guests can choose spas and foot baths, where there are female departments. Competition in Macau saunas is fierce because there are too many of them. Basically, on the first floor, you can see places with blue or beautiful lights, which are the entrances to sauna clubs. It is conspicuous because of the lights, and it is not conspicuous because the door is really small, but when you go upstairs from the elevator or stairs to the lobby, you will find that there is a different world here.

However, it is inevitable that there will be guests bathing topless in sauna clubs, and the guests are from all walks of life. In order to protect the privacy of guests, it is generally not allowed to take pictures in the club, unless the manager agrees to it in a specific area. This is one of the reasons why we only entertain male guests here. It is also for this reason that taking pictures at will is not allowed in Macau casinos.



04 Macau saunas also face vicious competition

Macau saunas not only face fierce competition, but also vicious behavior. Many sauna clubs have been in business for a long time, so the decoration seems a bit old, so they have to focus on the professional quality of therapists and some holiday activities to retain customers. Our sauna club will add some lucky draws on weekends from time to time to increase the probability of customers' second consumption. The best gift is a free massage service.

Many of our customers are from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland, and there are relatively few foreigners. When we meet guests in the lobby, we usually shout enthusiastically: "Hello, boss!" to give customers a feeling of being at home.

Our colleagues are from all over the world: Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Europe and the United States, as well as Nepal and even South Africa.

The salary of professional physiotherapists in mainland China is generally higher. The salary of our mainland masseurs is between that of Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Philippine masseurs. Although Vietnamese physiotherapists are relatively short, they have strong hands and their services are not expensive, so they are very popular among clients.



However, the number of tourists has decreased in recent years, especially in Macau, which has entered a silent period for a while, and business is worse than before. Many foreign professional therapists left Macau and went to Singapore and other places to continue working.

Generally, the massage time for guests is less than one hour, and most projects take between 20 and 90 minutes. After that, the guests will choose to rest in the box, or chat with their companions and talk about things. The consumption bill of the sauna ranges from hundreds to thousands and tens of thousands. Here we are talking about the price of Hong Kong dollars or Portuguese dollars. The exchange rate between Hong Kong dollars and Portuguese dollars is close to 1:1, which can be used universally.

Of course, according to customer needs, you can also customize the script killing, and the price will be different for different projects. The massage in the sauna focuses more on the technique, rather than technology and hard work.

05 The habitat of the red and blue guys

The packages costing a few hundred yuan are mostly for some whitewashed red and blue guys. They come here more to have a place to rest overnight, and there are free food. It doesn't matter whether they take a bath or a massage. After all, it is difficult for the whitewashed guys to get free hotel rooms from the casino public relations. It will cost more than a thousand to book a room by themselves. For massage here, many guys choose to come when there are fewer people. 199 yuan is equivalent to staying in an hourly room.

With more customers, we can roughly tell from their faces whether they have just come out of the casino. If they are energetic, most of them are red rice. If they are dejected and silent, they are basically black rice. Seeing those energetic customers, our colleagues work harder, say some nice words to make the customers happy, so that the probability of getting tips will be much higher.

When we meet depressed customers, we will also say to them: "You push the code, we push the back, you are still very lucky, don't lose hope in life, there will always be people in this world who are more bitter than you." Our boss is in his 40s, of Chinese and Portuguese descent, his father is Portuguese, and his mother used to be a masseuse in Macau, and that's how she met his father, and then the two fell in love, and he was born. Now his father has returned to Portugal to retire, and he and his mother stay in Macau to run this sauna club.



06 There is no field in Macau, only banker and player

Xiaoyao is my colleague, and more like my good sister. She is from Hunan, two years younger than me. When she first came here, she wanted to make more money and open a foot massage shop in her hometown. But in the end, she got lost in Macau. It is said that you make money in Macau and spend it in Macau. In the end, Xiaoyao did not take a penny home. That day, Xiaoyao just ran over excitedly after getting off work, and took out a round plastic sheet from her pocket, which was marked as 1,000 chips.

She said that the Taiwanese customer just now saw that she was good at gambling, so he took it out of his bag to reward her. She also took a look and saw that there were dozens of chips of different denominations in the bag. "How about we try it after get off work later?" Xiaoyao meant to spend the 1,000 yuan in the casino and ask for two free cups of milk tea.



I agreed. After all, I have been working in Macau for so long. I have only heard about Macau casinos from customers. I have never been there. Out of curiosity, Xiaoyao and I went to the "Casino" after get off work. The air conditioning in this casino is lower than that in our sauna. It feels like being in a vegetable market, and the shouting rises and falls from time to time.

Sichuan dialect, Beijing dialect, Shanghai dialect, Cantonese, Fujian dialect, Shanxi dialect came from all around the casino. When I heard Jiangxi dialect, I admit that I missed home, my parents, the old yellow cow at home, and the dog named Wangcai...

If I closed my eyes, I really thought this was a big city in the mainland. We walked around and stopped in front of a card table. Xiaoyao threw it casually and asked the dealer to break it up for her. She changed it for two 500 chips. The first bet, 500 was gone. We were very disappointed and felt that this thing was a money-eating beast, so we planned to throw away the last 500 chips. Anyway, it was not a cash code and could not be exchanged directly for cash. If you don't win, go somewhere else.

This time, Xiaoyao bet on "pairs", but unexpectedly, a pair came out, and Xiaoyao got more than 5,000 chips at once. She was very excited and experienced the charm of red and blue. Although we didn't continue playing that time, the red and blue game has taken root in Xiaoyao's body and started to sprout. The public relations came over and asked us if we needed to apply for a card? I just waved my hand to refuse, and Xiaoyao beside me said happily: "Apply for one!" I looked at Xiaoyao and felt that she was a little different, but I couldn't say it... Little did I know that it was this experience that made her fall into the swamp from then on.



07 Bone sister Xiaoyao completely fell

In her later work, Xiaoyao always had thoughts about the casino in her heart. After that experience, she began to get tired of work. Xiaoyao often made excuses not to go with me after get off work. At first, I thought she was in love, but later she often invited me to dinner and gave me small gifts. It seemed like she had made a fortune. But a few days later, she asked me to borrow money again, a few thousand, ten thousand, saying that something happened at home. For this sister, I also lent her money. Two days later, she returned it to me.

The manager is a local of Macau. He noticed that Xiaoyao was not in good condition recently, so he talked to her and asked her not to have any distractions and focus on work. Once I passed by the room where Xiaoyao was giving massages to customers, and I heard Xiaoyao chatting happily with the customer through the crack of the door. It turned out that they were talking about the red and blue play. Since then, I know that Xiaoyao plunged into the casino as soon as she got off work, just because she didn't want me to know, for fear that I would stop her. I knew that if this continued, Xiaoyao's job would be lost. Although she was still young and had no trouble finding a job, we had worked so hard to come to Macau to make a living. It was really not worth it to give up like this.

The thing I worried about still happened. Once Xiaoyao made a major mistake at work and complained to the manager. In order to calm the resentment of this regular customer, the manager had to ask Xiaoyao to apologize to the customer quickly. Unexpectedly, Xiaoyao seemed to have changed and said directly to the customer: "What the hell?! You want me to apologize, I now make 10,000 a day, why..." I quickly pulled Xiaoyao out of the side, and she didn't say "why". This made the customer angry and left directly, and the manager had to fire Xiaoyao.

When Xiaoyao left, she said to me: "Sister Shi, leave with me, you don't have to face those men all day, I have a good way, I guarantee you can make 10,000 a day..." I refused because I haven't earned enough money to build a house, and I need this hard-earned job. Moreover, the 10,000 yuan she earned in a day was actually just her good luck yesterday, and she won it at the poker table. She took the highlight moment as a permanent moment. "I won't leave. Listen to me. I'll apologize to the manager later, and I'll say a few good words for you..." I still hope she can stay.

Xiaoyao looked at me with contempt, said nothing, took her things and left the club. She has not contacted me since then. I took the initiative to call her, but later found that I was blocked. I think she may have changed her phone number and started to hate me. She hated that I, a good sister, "betrayed" her at that time and refused to leave with her. I didn't betray her. I always thought that she could be fine.



08 From "bone girl" to "go-go girl"

Until that day, my colleague Zhou said that she often saw Xiaoyao in XX casino, and her face looked not right, maybe she had lost all her money... I was still worried about her, so I went to the casino to find her after work, hoping that she could stop, but I couldn't meet her for several days.

Until two months later, that day, I met Xiaoyao again at the slot machine in the casino. She was playing with an obese customer. The customer looked like a rich man, in his 40s, with a Mediterranean hairstyle, and his hands were wandering around Xiaoyao's thighs from time to time... a little obscene. To be precise, Xiaoyao didn't play by herself, she just played with this man.

Xiaoyao wore a sexy leather miniskirt, purple high heels, and delicate makeup. The slit skirt revealed her snow-white thighs, and all the men present stole a glance at her from time to time. I approached them, and Xiaoyao spotted me from the side. Her expression was very surprised, with a trace of pity. Just when she was about to smile, she suddenly looked at me coldly and turned her head away.

I could feel the change from hope to despair in Xiaoyao's eyes. Her heart must be very complicated. Opposite me, the former good sister, she hated me and didn't want to see me in this situation. I didn't take the initiative to greet them. I sat behind them and was about to say something when the man spoke first: "No more fighting! Let's go to the room."

Then they got up. I didn't know what their relationship was. The man walked in front and Xiaoyao walked behind. They walked to the exit elevator together with a distance of one meter. The moment the elevator door closed, she looked at me directly, and there was no light in her eyes, and even hostility. I don't know how much Xiaoyao lost later, and how she went on the road of going to the sister. I only know that I lost the good sister who was once cheerful and sunny.



09 Going home

Macau has changed some people, but also destroyed many people. After working as a bone sister in Macau for 5 years, I resigned from my manager, who wanted to keep me, saying that I could get a raise and promotion. If it weren't for Xiaoyao, I think I would have continued to work, but now I just want to go home, because Macau is not my home, and all the prosperity here does not belong to me. After handing over the work to my colleagues, I remitted all the wages back to my hometown in Jiangxi, packed my luggage, bought a plane ticket, and embarked on the journey home.



Xiaoyao used to think that she could have the prosperity of Macau, but in fact, she just got the bait cast by Satan. I don't regret my experience as a bone sister in Macau. I make money by my own efforts. There is nothing I can't say. I just don't want to stay in Macau anymore. The temptation here is too great. Whether it is us bone sisters or customers who come for massage, if we are really addicted to red and blue, the ending will not be too good.

I advise all friends that there is no life in Macau, only the banker and the player in the casino.