One way to get rid of a cold

One way to get rid of a cold, originally uploaded by sazztastical.

Beth has had a bad cold for the past few days and had read in a book she's reading at the moment that if you go and have your back scraped - although it's painful - your cold will be gone by the next day. So last night in Pingyao we went to have a foot massage - very very nice. The woman doing Beth's feet asked if she had a cold and then said she needed a back scraping. So after a little deliberation Beth decided she would do it - at least that way she would (a) know what it was like and (b) hopefully get rid of her cold.
So she went and had it done after we'd eaten dinner. They scraped her back for about 10 minutes and then decided they should do some cupping too. Thing with cupping is, it leaves your back looking like this for about a week! Beth says it's not too sore, a couple of them are a bit tender but this is what everyone in China does when they have a cold so we have our fingers crossed it's going to work.
It's the following day as I'm writing this and the cold is definately better than it was but not gone completely so we're hoping it'll be gone by tomorrow ...