A Kiss of Madness While Bathing, Tang Dynasty-Style at Othership

Bathhouses reimagined at the intersection of movement, ritual, and community are in vogue in New York City and at the center of this cleansing and gathering renaissance are a couple key players. One is Robert Hammond, founder of the bi-weekly newsletter Culture of Bathing, which states on it’s website: “Bathing is our entry point — into design, history, community, and atmosphere.” As a US executive of the wellness group Therme Group he aims to expand bath houses in a big and based on his previous success in helping build The Highline Park and Little Island we are excited to see its progression. Together with Chinatown Basketball Club, a group that meets weekends in Columbus Park for pick-up hoops, Culture of Bathing joined forces to organize TāngTángTǎngTàng 湯棠淌燙: Performative Rituals in Flow at Othership, an avant-garde sauna and ice-plunge experience that newly opened in Williamsburg.

The sold-out evening on August 27, 2025, seamlessly wove together poetic bathing rituals, interactive rhythmic breathing, and basketball-inspired Tai Chi movements—each drawing from ancient and contemporary Chinese cultural influences. The evening unfolded as a carefully choreographed journey through the liminal spaces of water, breath, and movement. Individual segments mirrored the rhythm of a traditional sauna session, yet was layered with contemporary artistic interventions.

During the first sauna session, poet Jiaoyang Li’s hypnotic poetry reading enveloped the space—her words conjuring the opulence of the Tang Dynasty, inviting each guest to imagine themselves as Yang Guifei, the legendary imperial consort, languishing in her fabled bathing rituals. Caren Wenqing Ye guided participants through a breathwork session preparing them for the ice bath—a practice in controlled surrender, where breath became the bridge between shock and serenity—and her interactive projection connected body with spirit. The second sauna session introduced CBC founder Lu Zhang’s demonstration, where basketball movements dissolved into Taichi postures. The athleticism of the court merged with ancient martial forms, revealing unexpected kinship between contemporary street culture and centuries-old embodied wisdom. Meanwhile, musician Milam’s sound design accompanied the experience. The night concluded with Siyi Chen’s live guzheng performance, the ancient instrument’s resonant strings carrying guests back from their journey.

Chiarina Chen, a CBC player and curator, writes about the experience:

One moment I was melting in sweat, the next I was screaming in ice.

Around me were half-naked familiar faces, yet the scene felt like a rite with a kiss of madness. And it was my closest friends who had made this happen, a night of Tāng Táng Tǎng Tàng.

When Jiaoyang and Lu told me in June about an event on sauna and bathing, I was drawn to it immediately. I had to go. I had seen many characters and eccentrics in New York, but never a gathering of them to boil together in the heat. I had seen many friends at openings and parties looking glamorous, but not the version where they stripped down into swimsuits and boxers.

These weren’t random acquaintances. This was CBC—my people. No event could possibly feel this intimate, this free of social anxiety. The idea of them padding around barefoot in sauna gear was so absurd I couldn’t even picture it. Too close, too goofy. What if I end up crushing on someone?

Turns out: unlikely.

| the sauna.

Picture this: the friends you do exhibitions with, play basketball with, their friends of friends, all stacked in three tiers inside a glowing hot room. Shoulder to shoulder, knees against thighs, breathing the same heavy air. A red light washes over everyone and suddenly the whole place looks like a deli case of braised pork—steaming, tender, a little ridiculous, and very alive.

When our different skins, all familiar, are revealed together, a strange intimacy and freedom emerge. It feels like the body, once under the gaze, has been fully reclaimed. I remembered never enjoying pool parties in my twenties, always trapped in others’ opinion, never satisfied with my body. Feeling fat in China, flat in America, wrong in every direction. That night I felt delightful in my suit. It came in waves, from Lu, Jiaoyang and Caren’s Tang dynasty dreamscape, to the actual heat pressing us together. Why the sauna and not the pool? I think it’s the 气Qi. Outdoors, qi scatters. No amount of sunscreen or splashing can hold it. But inside, under heat, it thickens, becomes tangible.

Step into the sauna and you’re stepping into an alchemical vessel with a built-in disco. Each second your pores explode like champagne. Jiaoyang’s hypnotic poetry, Lu’s taichi-basketball routine, all became a choreography of breath. Bodies not touching, yet spilling into one another through every move, every inhale.

I thought of the ancient Shuowen Jiezi where it defined “mountain” as “that which disperses qi and gives birth to all things. (宣气散，生万物)” That’s what it felt like: our collective heat, pressed so close together, swelling into something bigger. Suddenly we were not just friends in Brooklyn but a mountain range that kept giving off force.

Lu had written an essay on the culture of bathing, with Yang Guifei at its center. “Back then, Yang Guifei was just having the time of her life. She didn’t care who was watching. She loved to play, loved to bathe, loved to enjoy herself. It was crazy to brand her the ruin of the empire. Tonight we are Yang Guifei. Tonight we play, and we’re going to enjoy ourselves to the fullest.” Dressed in red, Lu seemed to me exactly like Yang Guifei herself, sharing her pleasure across the centuries.

And with it came something else: a genuine liking for my body, right there in that presence. Not the self-conscious liking under a gaze, but a pulse of vitality from within. Sheng wan wu (生万物) —to give birth to all things—sounded less like cosmology and more like the beginning of joy. Yang Guifei’s Joy.

I was thinking this when Jiaoyang floated toward me with a lantern.

“You are a siu mai,” she declared.

The music started rising, pulsing.

“I am a siu mai,” I repeated.

Gosh, who needs clubbing when you can dance in a sauna?

“You are a translucent, sexy siu mai.”

“I am a translucent, sexy siu mai.”

| the ice bath.

To me, sitting in ice water is no different from sitting in boiling water. It’s suicide either way. Yet here I was, preparing to join my friends in what felt like a collective suicide pact.

My first attempt at this thing was late last year, with Jiaoyang. Everyone else just plunged right in, faces perfectly calm. I was stunned. I looked at her, she shook her head, firmly: not going. I put one foot in, yanked it back out immediately. The coach kept cajoling us, “Challenge yourself!” But we stood fast at the pool’s edge, nailed.

This time, I was ready. After all, this year I’ve been through so much already. What’s one little ice bath? Just grit my teeth and bear it. Endure, and it will be fine. To my left, Peiyue looked calm. To my right, Connor, wrapped in a towel, expectant, thrilled, saying this was exactly what he needed, assuring me I’d absolutely love it too. But the moment my feet went in, my face twisted out of shape. Pain like amputation shot through my body. Holy shit—it’s fucking freezing!

I clung hard to Peiyue. Connor pressed on my right arm, “You got this, Chi! You can do it!”

The next second, my whole upper body, up to the shoulders, went under. I let out the loudest scream of my life. In my head, I cursed in every filthy language I knew. And consider this: I’ve rolled down a mountain in a flipped car in Alaska, I’ve been robbed at gunpoint in Kenya, I’ve stood in a burning house, I’ve even encountered ghosts in a demolition site. I never screamed then. Only here. Only in ice water.

I’m convinced now that in my life, only two things would ever make me scream: ice baths and childbirth.

I felt paralysis closing in. I wanted out. I wanted to bolt. But my friends held me firm, like midwives ushering me through the ordeal.

In the blur of shouting, I will never forget that scene: me submerged in the water, Peiyue holding me down, Caren in a distance yelling “Breathe!” A huge camera in my face catching every contorted feature, and above me Connor’s towel-wrapped head, his steady voice: “You got this! You got this, Chi!”

It was water-birth, almost literally. With every “breathe,” I expected the next word to be “Push!”

Chi you got this! Breathe! Push! One more time! Almost there!

When I finally stumbled, half-rolling, half-crawling back into the sauna, my friends smiled at me with tender eyes like I just survived. I will never forget those eyes. After this, we are bound for life, amico.

Back in the heat, I felt again the miracle of the body. The stabbing, knife-like pain was gone, replaced by a sudden lightness, a lift. Ice baths, it seems, are also exquisite torture followed by a dopamine flood. Happiness arriving so fast it makes you think you could have another child on the spot.

It’s like prime braised pork. You always punge it into cold water after steaming so it comes out springy. That, I thought, must be the logic behind this ordeal.

| the after party, sort of.

Later, we had Sichuan food and then drifted up to the W rooftop for a drink in the breeze. Siyi’s Guzheng sound still lingered in my head, refusing to leave.

It had been a long time since I’d had a night like this. The first half was hallucinatory without alcohol. Dry steam, cyber-Tang Dynasty, laughing ourselves into combustion inside Tāng Táng Tǎng Tàng.

The second half, with alcohol, delivered the opposite, a kind of clearing.

On the rooftop, a small crowd started to dance, and others chatted in little pairs. Behind each silhouette was a faint shimmer of the skyline, as if everyone took charge of a wisp of Qi and light behind them. I felt like stumbling onto a secret that wasn’t mine to keep.

The first drink was terrible. The second was passable.

I couldn’t tell whether the sauna had drained more of my qi or returned it to me. What I did feel was lightness, a looseness: to talk if I felt like it, to keep quiet if I didn’t. No need to meet anyone, no need to avoid anyone either. Just moving along, like air slipping between sound and silence.

It was as if presence itself was enough.

Lu, do you think Tai Chi could be done this way, too?

At midnight, the bar flipped on its harsh white lights, the universal sign for get out.

Time to put our daytime skins back on.

Wherever our souls had wandered tonight, now they would have to return the same way.

After all, it was only a Wednesday.

A version of this text was published on the Substack Chiarina’s QZone.

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