Cross posted at http://www.nomadicminds.org

Somewhere between Xi'An and Beijing, my friend and her daughter caught a cold — an ordinary travel story except for the treatment she sought.

Traditional Chinese medicine has 4 standard treatment methods: pressure points massage, acupuncture, spot heating, and herbs. Note that surgery is not one of them and the first three are different physical forces on the same system: the "qi" circuitry. Based on a completely different set of theories than its western counter-part, Chinese medicine believes energies in a body govern life, or the healing processes.

To treat colds, one merely needs to unblock the natural balancing hot and cold energies; skin scraping the right areas the right way does just that. The bruises are the proof: the toxins now have floated to the top and will soon dissipate.

Physiologically, scraping damages the skin. When our body tries to repair, it also eradicates the cold virus. It takes a few hundred years to discovered the best areas to stimulate such responses.

Yes, both the mother and the daughter had their skins scraped. (Pictured is my back.) They felt much better the next day. Skins felt just fine, except during hot showers. Small prices to pay, they happily claimed, to be able to enjoy the rest of the China trip.