ISpyShanghai

For the last few weeks I’ve had a bad neck and shoulder. Massages weren’t helping, binge drinking wasn’t helping, I was almost out of ideas.

Then on Saturday I was limping past an acupuncture clinic and decided I might as well give it a try.

We only really planned to have a quick look at the place; see if it looked clean, any dead bodies covered in broken needles stuffed in the bins, then make an appointment.
The doctor, however, had the bedside manner of a Soweto street hustler and before I knew what was what he had me in his office and was sticking a needle in my shoulder to see which bits made me squawk.

The shoulder pricks were just for diagnosis- once he worked out the problem (too much “jin” blood) it was obvious that the solution to my shoulder pain was to stick a bunch of needles in umm, my stomach, and then put a little beehive full of smouldering ashes on my belly.

It hurt, but only a bit. Little lines of muscle spasm pain that seemed to go away if I concentrated hard on relaxing. The heat from the little beehive got hotter and hotter too, I could smell my little belly hairs burning.
I’m tough, I can take it- and didn’t press the panic button once (well maybe once, but just for fun).

It’s tempting to say that the guy was a total fraud, but you know what? My shoulder feels a lot better- and at 150RMB for the session, I think it was a pretty good deal.

Thank frig Emma was there though, the doctor spoke at a million characters a minute and if you don’t speak Chinese, this isn’t a guy to be messed with.

[Sorry about the quality of the photos, I was caught cameraless and had to use my mobile phone. The quality is so poor you can barely see my rippling six pack]

Dr Lou’s Acupuncture Clinic, Xinzha Lu (a little West of the junction with Changde Lu)- 150RMB