At about 10 p.m. on July 4, at the Sanding Road Night Market in Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, Ms. Lin (left), from Lishui, was a little tired of guarding her kissing fish treatment stall. Don't underestimate this stall, it can bring her a net income of more than 2,000 yuan per night. Yiwu Sanding Road Night Market, starting from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. is the largest night market in Yiwu City, with high rents and large traffic.
Ms. Lin's fish therapy booth can provide services to 12 people at a time, and the 20-minute fish therapy experience costs 20 yuan. Every day from 6 p.m. to about 3 a.m. the next day, in addition to the nightly booth fee of 400 yuan, she has at least 2,000 yuan per night, and the business can reach more than 4,000 yuan when the business is good.
Fish therapy services first arose in Turkey in the 14th century. The "broodstock" used is generally the pale red cuttlefish (Garra rufa). This fish is mainly distributed in freshwater basins in Anatolia and the Middle East. Pale red cuttlefish have no teeth and have a very mixed diet, including algae (especially green algae and diatoms), protozoa, rotifers, small crustaceans and so on.
This small fish will eat the animal's dander when food is scarce or limited, and this predatory behavior is what the merchant calls "small fish kissing massage". There are also some observant and imaginative people who start to try fish therapy to treat psoriasis, but they basically do not get medically meaningful results.
Ms. Lin's kissing fish therapy attracts many people to visit in the bustling night market, and it is often visited by foreigners.
A pair of young people experience fish therapy, with more than 300 small fish in each bathtub. On a sweltering summer night, soaking your feet in it and feeling particularly itchy may be one of the ways to attract customers.
At about 23:00, Ms. Lin chatted with a customer with a tired face: "Kissing fish" can not only eat the dead skin on the body, promote metabolism, but also maintain health. Photo by Cai Shengxiang