New tours, old cures

A visitor receives tuina, a form of therapeutic massage used in TCM.

Day Two

Visitors can travel to the Summer Palace, the picturesque imperial garden and the summer resort of the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835 - 1908). A climb up Longevity Hill provides a bird's-eye view of the gardens, and visitors can also go boating on Kunming Lake to see the famous 17-Arch Bridge.

As one of the most popular photographic spots, the garden offers natural landscapes - hills and water - and manmade structures such as pavilions, halls, temples and bridges.

It takes about 30 minutes to travel by car from the Summer Palace to the next stop, the Taishen Xianghe Villa in Changping district. The house boasts Ming- and Qing-style architecture, beautiful gardens, reviving air and medicinal herbs, pines and fruit trees.

With an area of more than 100,000 sq m, the villa is a holiday resort that offers sightseeing, restaurants, a fitness center and TCM therapy.

The villa's Ruizhenlou restaurant provides cuisine designed to maintain a healthy body, such as the Prince's Family Banquet, which was developed by veteran TCM experts.

Seasonal dishes are provided, so the visitor can eat foods appropriate for the time of year and features fresh vegetables and TCM herbs planted by the teams at the villa.

In the TCM Health Cultivation Center experts provide diagnosis, therapy and consultations tailored for the individual.

Visitors can experience the ancient technique of guasha, or gentle skin rubs with smooth objects such as jade or even ox horns. The treatment may produce red marks on the skin if the patient has excessive heat in their body, but although they resemble bruises, the marks are painless and will disappear after a very short time.

In addition to experiencing the therapeutic properties of TCM, guests can drink tea in the garden, and relax by watching colorful carp in the pools, or simply strolling around the garden and enjoying the beauty of traditional Chinese structures that emphasize the aesthetics of symmetry.

After supper and a short rest, visitors can refresh themselves with TCM herb baths, whose functions differ according to the herbs employed, to promote resistance of fatigue, improved quality of sleep, better skin condition, and ease aches and pains in the stomach and legs.

Meditation in the five public bathing pools is beneficial to the heart, liver, spleen, stomach and lungs. The experts will formulate recipes suited to each individual's needs and tastes, and visitors can bathe in large wooden tubs in the Chinese tradition.