APSARA Spa

What: Healing Ginger Therapy

Why: Shanghai’s winter cold has crept into your bones

How Much: Two Courses for RMB 680, Three Courses for RMB 980, or Four Courses for RMB 1,280

Where: 457 Shanxi Bei Lu, near Beijing Lu. Tel: 6258 5580. Web: www.aspara.com.cn

APSARA Spa’s Healing Ginger Therapy is not the right spa treatment to choose if you’re hungry. The heady aroma of ginger permeates all four “courses” of this delicious treatment for your skin, and you’ll be craving the fragrant “panacea of spices” for days after. Considered by herbal healing traditions as a warming spice, the healing ginger treatment is designed to heat you from the inside out as Shanghai winter’s cold clings on through another month.

The “menu” from the Cambodian Wellness centre starts with a 30 minute Fortifying Ginger Spice Bath Ritual, and the tub is filled with a steaming soup of sweet spices. Allegedly a tonic for your heart, the ginger gets to work immediately as your pulse quickens the deeper you sink into the oversized tub. One candlelit half hour flies by, and you’re ready to be whisked to an upstairs treatment room for your “entrée”.

The Ginger Sugar Body Polish exfoliates your winter-zapped skin and leaves you with a healthy glow from APSARA’s house-made products. After you’ve been buffed and shined, the Healing Ginger Spice Body Wrap “main course” soothes your skin. The therapist applies the paste with long, smooth strokes before wrapping you in a heated cocoon and relaxing you with a quick head massage. Forty minutes later, you emerge from your chrysalis feeling rejuvenated.

To top off the treatment, the “dessert” course features the Signature Royal APSARA Massage tailored for the skin food therapy with ginger massage oil. The hour long treatment kneads away any remaining tension, and by the time you’re done, there’s no way you can refuse the therapist’s sweet offer of a steaming mug of spicy ginger tea. With feeling returning to your thawed extremities, you’ll emerge from the spa a ginger convert.