Beauty Travelogue: Beijing

My thing for Beijing started during the 2008 Summer Olympics. The Bird's Nest! The Water Cube! Since China opened to foreign markets in the late '70s, worlds have collided — East and West, old and new. Beijingers (19 million and counting) are abandoning the dusty brands of yore in favor of newfound luxury. (Alexander McQueen and Dior recently opened flagships here.) Still, they take the whole "beauty from within" thing literally. Traditional Chinese medicine says that our internal energy — or qi — controls how we look. Got acne? Graying hair? Heat your qi up, cool it down, massage it, and you're fixed! Before the West wins the capital city over entirely, I set out to uncover its glorious origins. Mao's sweet crib, the Forbidden City.

That whole scandal about the Chinese gymnasts being underage — I get it. I find it impossible to guess women's ages here. For millennia, they've been prepping, priming, and whitening their skin, and it shows. From the time of the Qing dynasty to the late 1980s, women relied on homemade remedies like pore-refining masks of egg whites and pearl powder. Now they favor the same pricey imports we use. But their results seem so much better! Something doesn't add up. A quick online search, and I discover that the domestically made Chinese lotion Friendship Cream still has a following. I present an image of it to locals as if it were a flier for a missing cat (Have you seen this cream?). They laugh and refer me to Taobao, China's version of eBay. At a drugstore, the salesclerk is so offended she shoos me down the block. There, I find an elderly man selling the cream, along with tins of snake oils and tiger balms, for less than a dollar atop a cardboard box. I buy one of each. So what if no one under 40 uses them here? Their grandmas did — still do — and they look great. Long Live the Motherland Beijing, Chen Man, 2009.

I've lost years off my life wrestling with a blowdryer and flatiron to feign the thick, straight hair Chinese women are born with. So when celeb stylist Tony Li tells me, "Asian women don't want straight hair," I have to fight back my fury. His clients, like actresses Ziyi Zhang and Fan Bing Bing, want layers, volume, and texture. Women flock to Tony Studio, his posh chain of minimalist salons, for perms that will give them a hint of messy, untamed waves. Red and chestnut-brown dyes are also a favorite. East or West, we all want what we don't have.

Chinese women don't get fat, yet fitness isn't a priority. "Gyms are mainly frequented by expats," Tiffany Wang, style and living editor at local magazine The Beijinger, says. "It's not unusual to see Chinese people working out in jeans and heels — they're only beginning to form ideas of what it means to stay physically fit." But massage, I'm warned, is a workout unto itself. Beijing has entire hospitals dedicated to it, and blind massage therapists are considered the best. (Lack of sight is believed to heighten their sense of touch.) I test the theory at Aibosen Blindman Massage. First, a hot-tea foot bath, then a petite yet impossibly strong blind woman tackles my acupressure points from toe pads to heels. I'll take a deep massage over a weak Western one any day, but this is no joke! Traditional Chinese massage — or tui na — is vigorous and often uncomfortable. During the 70 minutes, there are moments I swear my arches might be impaled. OK, so the Chinese have a higher threshold for pain. I leave, however, surprisingly nimble, my neck and shoulders relaxed and my feet ready to tackle Tiananmen Square.