‘Funny and heartwarming’: woman in China performs traditional scraping massage on sleeping man after mistaking his hangover for heatstroke
- Hungover and tired after late-night drinking session, man in China falls into deep sleep at his meat stall
- Online delight as surveillance footage shows female stranger approach man and begin traditional scraping therapy as he sleeps
A video of a woman in China giving traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) remedy to the owner of a butcher shop after mistaking the man’s hangover for heatstroke has delighted mainland social media.
In the surveillance clip, the meat shop owner, surnamed Wu, is seen napping at his stall in a market in eastern China’s Zhejiang province on August 4.
Wu said he was tired from a hangover after drinking till midnight and waking up for work at 5am that morning.
As he slept, a middle-aged woman passing by his shop suddenly approached and began scraping his back with a coin for the next 10 minutes. Wu did not wake up.
Red petechiae soon appeared on his neck as the unidentified woman applied gua sha to the area.
Gua sha, also known as scraping, is a form of massage that uses a small tool, such as a spoon, a coin or even honed animal bones, to scrape the surface of the skin to increase blood circulation, which produces red, sand-like bruising known as petechiae.
It originated in ancient China and remains a popular folk treatment to relieve conditions such as heatstroke, fever and muscle fatigue.