by Neil W. McCabe

A Davis Square clinic and spa that combines the services of a beauty salon and traditional Chinese therapeutic treatments held its grand opening July 17.

“The name of the spa is Fu Shen Therapeutic Spa, which is a reference to fu shen, an herb the Chinese use to give a person total relaxation,” said Wei Zhang, one of the spa’s owners.

Zhang said this is her second spa. Her first one opened in 2002 in Quincy, where she moved with her family in 1991 from Beijing.

Though far from her homeland, Zhang said she still relies on the wisdom and philosophy of traditional China. At the spa, each of the four rooms is designed with walls and a deng long, a traditional hanging lamp adorned in silk in a dominant color that expresses one of the spa’s themes: ambition, honesty, energy and peace.

The Ambition Room is red, a color associated with power for the Chinese. Ambition is the first principle because it is what drives one to improve oneself and be successful, she said.

The Honesty Room is yellow because it is the color associated with Chinese kings. It is important to exercise power with honesty and integrity, she said.

The Energy or Qi Room is green and is the place where the clients recharge their batteries and refresh their souls, she said.

The Peace Room is blue and is used for facials, she said. The facials are more than cosmetic because of the attention that the spa pays to reducing the stress that builds up around the eyes with a special eye care facial. “The Chinese have a saying that the eyes are the window to the heart,” she said.

Zhang said although most of her current facial clients are female, the men who get facials are nearly all businessmen. “We are always using our eyes for watching, reading and working on the computer. For businessmen it is even more busy, more intense.”

After the success of her spa in Quincy, Zhang decided that her next spa would put more emphasis on therapeutics. Since her husband’s company is also in Davis Square, she was very familiar with the area’s character. “Davis Square is a very nice location with a strong artistic community,” she said.

It was also important to her that the spa be in the center of the Arlington, Cambridge and Somerville client base of her partner, Dr. Yan Shi Chen, she said.

Chen was a surgeon and an acupuncturist, before he dedicated his career to the practice of the ancient Chinese medical art of bian stone therapy, he said.

The bian stone is a black rock, fashioned from si bin floating rocks, which are rocks found only in the Si River that appear to float just below the river’s surface, he said.

The bian stones have a unique makeup of calcium, iron, phosphorus and other minerals that give the stones a lower radiation reading than other stones. These minerals and the water currents give the stones a smoothness that is soft against the skin, Chen said.

The floating stone therapy pre-dates acupuncture, and is more accurately described as acupressure, he said.

The art of bian stones was lost for hundreds of years until recently when old medical texts were found that led to both a revival of the practice and the re-discovery of the source of the stones, he said.

While acupuncture treats nerves, the acupressure applied by a heated bian stone works on muscles and bones, Zhang said.

People who have anxiety about the acupuncture needles now have a better alternative, she said.

Zhang said she met Chen when her friends recommended him to help her recover from a car accident in 2002.

She was driving her 1999 Audi sports sedan on Route 93 when Zhang veered too closely to the median, she said. “The front corner of the car lightly touched the concrete barrier and set off my side door air bag. When I held up my arm to protect my face and keep it out of my eyes, I lost my steering.”

“My husband, who is a vice-president for sales for the software company Spotfire, had to fly home from a business trip in Europe,” she said. “He was worried about me, but he was angry that I was driving too fast.”

“Dr. Chen was great. He fixed my neck, released my pain and took away my headaches,” she said.

Zhang said she was eager to recover because she is very active in the Hua Xia Chinese Dance Company, a troupe that performs dances in the ancient styles.

The critical event that led to Zhang coming to America was the aftermath of Chinese government’s suppression of the student protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989, when she was 16 years-old, she said.

Although her family lived in Beijing and she was at Tiananmen Square with the protesters, Zhang said she never learned the truth about what really happened until she came to America.

As part of the information distortion campaign by the government, Chinese teachers were ordered to have all of the school children write letters to say that there was no massacre of the students by the soldiers, she said.

Zhang’s own mother, who was a high school teacher, refused to assign the letter to her students or write a letter herself. For her mother, it was then time to leave. Her mother left China for America and sent for her husband and children after settling in Quincy, she said.

Zhang said she did not leave China right away with her mother because she was finishing her cosmetology studies, where she learned Western and Chinese techniques of make-up, hair styling and grooming.

From the turmoil in her homeland, Zhang traveled thousands of miles and is now here helping to reduce the stresses of American life. Combining her studies in China with a business degree from Quincy College and the ancient medical practice of the doctor who helped her recover from her car accident, Zhang said she looks forward to a long and prosperous run in Somerville.