When visiting parks and outdoor teahouses of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, you may often encounter people walking among the patrons offering their services. Each carries a toolset: various small metallic instruments, some pointed, others soft-edged：

These people are ear-cleaners, an occupation which is perhaps unique to China. Their tools are designed to rid your ear canal from its surplus earwax. One interesting tool among these is a thin, flexible metallic rod with a miniature feather-duster at its edge. When the rod is tapped it starts vibrating very quickly and emitting a faint noise, just like a tuning fork. After being tapped, the vibrating rod is inserted into the ear canal, carefully as not to let it touch the sides. The delicate duster at the tip will gently bzzzzzzt against your inner ear, cleaning it. The feeling is supposed to be “weird at first, but you get used to it”.

I had considered trying it when I was in Chengdu, but refrained; one of the main reasons being that I hadn’t noticed the cleaners replacing or sanitizing their tools after cleaning other people’s ears…