Massages and Chinese Medicine

On our first day at Chi Mei Hospital we got a quick orientation and were introduced to all the staff there. Later, we got to attend a lecture on traditional Chinese medicine given by one of the residents here. Afterwards he asked us if any of us wanted to try acupuncture or cupping. Almost all of us did. He's a sports medicine specialist so I decided to tell him about my shin splints.

Acupuncture felt weird... not really what I expected. It

didn't hurt at all. I'm not sure that it helped but it did feel sort of cool and numb in the area around the needle. The next day walking around, I didn't really n

otice a dif

ference at all. Some of the girls also tried cupping. The purpose of cupping is to increase the flow if xi (chi) to the area and relieve pain or soreness. This is a picture of one of my classmates.

They create suction underneath the glass. In the end it turns out just looking like a huge round hickey.

Later that night we all decided to go get some traditional Chinese massages. My friend Amy and I went to scout it out. It took some pretty tricky sign language to figure it out, but in the end we had appointments for 9 people. They star

ted my soaking our feet in this brownish w

ater. I'm not sure but I think it was tea in it. While my feet soaked they gave us a ten minute neck massage, which I thought was pretty nice. Afterwards we got a 20 minute feet massage. And it hurt. If you said "ow!" they would just sort of smiled and dug in a little harder. Notice the picture--I'm trying to smile, but it hurt! The massage cost about $450 NT-about 16 US dollars. We were trying to figure out how much to tip, but I guess here they don't tip at all anywhere, which makes it nice.