Skin Scraping, Chinese Culture, and the No. 1 Scholar- Day 9

When we woke up on Friday morning, our 9th day at TU, we went to our second Traditional Chinese Medicine class. This time, after reviewing what we covered from the first class, our teacher performed  "gua sha" on Noah and Zane. Gua sha is Chinese for "skin scraping." It works by the person performing gua sha by taking oils and putting it on the skin, and scraping the skin with a hard tool. It brings the blood to the top of the skin. Apparently, the more blood that comes to the top, and the darker the blood, the more sick the person is. Noah and Zane both didn't particularly bruise too much, and the teacher said that they seemed to be healthy. Here's a few pictures of the process:

She said that Zane had some knots that needed to be worked out, so she decided to use cupping on his back. 

After the gua sha demonstration, our teacher told us that we all needed to be healthy. So, she taught us a few yoga/tai chi forms to keep us healthy. It was definitely a relaxing way to end the class- even if I thought I might split my pants from bending over.

Before we left Traditional Chinese Medicine class, Dr. Reed got a massage, and then, lunch!

After lunch, we went to our afternoon class- Chinese culture. My phone battery died, however, and I was forced to leave it in the room during this class. 1600 photos over 14 days... How do I miss these important events?! 

Anyway, Chinese culture was very interesting. Hazel was our teacher- we had met her before. Prior to Chinese culture class, she was the interpreter for our music teacher. We enjoyed her class very much! She was a great teacher. She taught us about several important parts of Chinese culture- their festivals, traditional clothing, and Chinese marriages. We enjoyed her class so much that we  ran the time over by almost an hour! 

We had to literally run back to the hotel to get ready for dinner- we had dinner with the school president, several deans, Megan, Hazel and several other staff members. It was a great honor! We went to the No. 1 Scholar- a thousand year old restaurant about 20 minutes from the University. We went in, and descended some stairs to the room where we dined. A huge table was set up in the middle of the room with a huge Lazy Susan on top of it. We were served rice wine, beer, and tons and tons of food. We ate and ate, and toasted each other all night long. The President of the University even presented all of us with Taizhou University pins:

After we were all sufficiently happy with our intake of food and drink, we took many, many pictures with everyone. 

It was a great way to start winding down our trip! After dinner, we went back and some of us even went to KTV for the third time. I was incredibly tired so I stayed back. Then, we went to bed and prepared for our last two days before we went back home.