Flesh-eating fish in Beijing

M. Kabat | Dec 1, 2007 10:00 am | 2 comments | 9940 reads

Yes, there are flesh-eating fish in Beijing. But you have to pay a lot for their flesh-eating services. Does this sound like fun to you? It is just the kind of thing I like to do on my Saturdays, so last weekend I went to Jiuhua Spa and Resort (hot springs on a cold day!) outside the city (directions and details below).

Stepping into a hot pool full of fish that will eat your feet and try to sneak into your bathing suit is the kind of thing that only tempts middle-aged Chinese women deeply concerned about their excess toe skin and stupid foreigners who like to do things just so they can say they did them. Perhaps you can guess what category my friends and I fall in (a hint: we are all post-menopausal).

Under normal conditions, the fish (a species of carp called Garra Rufa or qinqin yu) eat decayed plant or animal matter. Due to the high temperature in spas, however, algae and micro-organisms are unable to grow in the pool, and the only source of the food for the (poor, starving) fish is the dead skin cells of human bathers. There seems to be some controversy as to the actual benefits of Garra Rufa therapy; some websites (important ones, like wikipedia) claim that Garra Rufa treatment can temporarily cure psoriasis; others view it as a sort of quack money-making scheme. I’m not sure which is true, but an hour in the hot fishy water cost RMB 58 (that’s on top of the RMB 188 entrance ticket to the spa itself), tickled in a rather unpleasant way, and did not provide any noticeable changes in my skin.

If you’d like to try out “Magic Fish Spa Therapy,” you have a few options. Jiuhua Spa and Resort is located outside of the city but is easily accessible by public transportation; take number 5 or 13 line to Lishui Qiao, then take bus 984 about twenty minutes to its final destination. Entrance ticket RMB 188 (though they do offer discounts on weekdays); includes 3 hours of spa delights and a 45-minute foot massage (N.B. do not go hungover; hot springs will only further dehydrate you). If you're feeling lazy post-soak, you can take a black cab home to the second ring road for RMB 90.

Alternatively, Block 8 offers fish therapy, but strangely, only men are allowed. I would expect that the pool would be cleaner at Block 8 (there was a lot of fish poo in Jiuhua's fish pool), but I’ll never be able to find out. If you go, please let us know how it is.

A bit of a drive northwest of the city is Shengshifan Springs in Yanqing county, also reportedly offering fish therapy. See a 360-degree image of the spa here.

Links and Sources
Xinhua: Magic "Fish Spa" attracts more in China
Wikipedia (answers.com): Garra Rufa

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bpof's picture bpof Submitted by Guest on Sun, 09/05/2010 - 23:05

First of all - find the place.

This is a huge labyrinthine park that must contain at lest four international sized hotels or conference centres. And do not under any circumstances go there unless you either speak Chinese or you are with someone who does. Even then - at times my friend found the people working there very hard to understand.

Now to the Flesh eating fish.

Yes - there are fish in the pool. However this particular shoal will never starve - even if no more customers show up. There is enough algae in the bath (it is not big enough to be called a pool) to keep them hale and hearty for a long time to come. That is unless they try to eat their dead shoal mates and they too get sucked into the filter and lie dead at the bottom.

The whole experience left me feeling that I had been ripped off. The pools were dirty and I wonder when they were last - if ever - cleaned.

The hot pools - supposedly full of water containing wonderful remedies for all sorts of ailments - looked like so many dirty bubbling pots of broth.

If you want a swimming pool - go somewhere local - you certainly will not have to pay the 200 RMB each that we were charged.

If you DO go - demand to know what you have paid for. You will not be given a ticket or a programme so as you move around the Spa there is no way for the staff there to tell what facility you are entitled to use.

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