I visit the Traditional Chinese Medicine office on Shamian Island (one of the more prestigious, expensive... and somewhat touristy ones). This was actually the first time in my life that I'd had acupuncture done, and I was pretty excited about trying it... which was funny, because my producer and film crew were actually somewhat squeamish about it.
I was trying to talk the crew into letting me try every treatment on offer, but no dice... we were on a pretty tight shooting schedule that day. No free hot oil massages for Quinn. :(
1:20 always makes me laugh. I play 'clueless foreigner' better when I'm not trying to. :)
You might pick up on the whole hot/cold foods theme that comes up in this episode--Ken mentions it a bit around 6:00. This system is something that every Chinese person grows up with and has a pretty much innate understanding about--and was one of those bizarre, recurring cultural themes that came up again and again over my years in China. I had no trouble accepting basic Dao ideas about balance, especially relating to Chi/electricity in the body, and how massage or diet or medicine could affect this balance--but I could never quite get used to being told I couldn't eat too much mango because it was a 'hot food'.
An extreme example of this that comes to mind: there are some foods that the Chinese will absolutely *refuse* to mix in hotpot, because they believe they are toxic when combined. I'm not sure how they determine this, as there were some foods I ate in hotpot that looked pretty toxic before they ever went into the soup. :P
technical notes: Ken narrated this. I still have crooked mouth syndrome due to my nose being stuffed up. I wasn't making that up at the start. :)
