What I mean is what’s up in Chinese day-to-day-lives-ville?
Two things you might know about the
Chinese: 1. There are lots of them. 2. They’re getting richer.
But when they look in the mirror it seems many
still aren’t happy with themselves. That’s not ‘themselves’ in an internal,
spiritual sense. They’re not going to renewal weekends surrounded by crystals
and rebirthers. It’s more about what the casing looks like. So, more and more
are opting for change.
That’s where a loosely regulated health
care sector and a wide array of, let’s say, ludicrously cavalier medical practitioners
comes in handy.
Last time we checked in on the Chinese we
revealed, in a worldwide exclusive, that many were going in for one sort of
cosmetic change – that of having a couple of digits altered on their birth certificate. It takes years off your life. (See Popular Posts, No.1, at right). This seems astounding, until you
consider some of the cosmetic surgery that’s becoming increasingly popular here.
1. WITHER YOUR JAW MUSCLES?
Not happy with your face? Imagine it without
those pesky muscles.
People get botox all over the world, but
it’s particularly cheap here. And popular. This is intriguing. Of all the races
who might need a damn good unwrinkling, you wouldn’t think Asians were one of
them. Here’s an interesting fact from my doctor wife, who is of Chinese
heritage and who I married purely for her lack of wrinkles: Asian people have
more collagen occurring naturally in their bodies than Caucasians. Top of the
list come Indians. That’s why white folks go wrinkly earlier than Asians. Of
course old Asian people can go very
wrinkly indeed, but until they’re about 60 it’s just not a fair contest. Have
you ever seen a Miss Cambodia with wrinkles? The prosecution rests.
Still, hordes of Chinese women – perhaps
with a little too much time on their hands with all their increased middle-classness
– are convincing themselves they have wrinkles that are simply beyond the pale.
(Many have skin like that too, which often comes from a tube of whitener, and
descends from an old status-driven belief that darker skin proves you or your
ancestors were guilty of working on a farm).
There’s ‘normal’ botox, as favoured by all
those Hollywood actors who in their later years have based whole new careers on
looking startled.
Then there’s this kind of botox. According
to the website of the Beijing Xiehu Hospital’s plastic surgery department, you
can have botox injected into your jaw muscles in a way that makes them soft. They
are essentially atrophied. Rendered useless. It’s a bespoke stroke. Your face
does look thinner, however.
It’s all so simple. No longer will you have
that chubby face. No longer will you chew properly, either. The website concedes
this, saying you can say goodbye to crunching on hard things. Granted, the
typical Chinese diet doesn’t call for gnawing on a steak. Noodles, rice, sweet
potato - they’re all as soft as sea slugs. But, among other things, you won’t
be able to crunch nuts or chew preserved animal tendons - a popular snack food
here. Still, not being able to masticate properly is surely a small price to
pay for having a thinner face, no?
After six months the muscles build up
again, resulting of course in an unsightly face, so you’ll need to repeat the
process.
To their credit, the hospital website
offers potential clients a list of things to consider. My favourite is: "9. Maybe
the two sides of your face will not be symmetrical".
2. BEING THIS PRETTY IS A TOUGH GRIND
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A promotional before-and-after shot of a woman who's had her jaw muscles done. That's the improved face on the right. |
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This is a recent photo of Hong Kong born actor Zhao Ya Zhi, aka Angie Chiu. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing she might have had a little bit of touch-up work done to the dial. She's 57. Seriously. |
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Perhaps Zhao went to the western clinic that runs this photo on its advertisements. Maybe the two sides of your face will not be symmetrical. |
2. BEING THIS PRETTY IS A TOUGH GRIND
“Doctor! Doctor! I don’t think I’m ready to
disengage my jaw muscles just yet,” you might hear yourself saying. “I might
just settle for you taking the angle grinder to my cheekbones instead”.
If you thought suffering for beauty meant
crampy shoes, then you’re just not trying. As that sign outside my favourite
clothes shop says, there are no ugly women, only lazy women. So you might want
to try this increasingly popular option called xiu quan gu, or ‘bone sculpting of the cheeks’. There’s also xia he jiao mo gu, or ‘jaw angle bone
grinding’.
No hidden meanings here. For the right
price a facial carpenter, or surgeon,
makes an incision, exposes the cheek or jaw bones, and goes at them with an
angle grinder. We assume it’s a more dainty piece of machinery than those you
see on construction sites, but they work the same way. Just imagine that
unmistakable “biieeeaairnt” sound you hear around worksites. Now imagine it on
your face.
“Yes, doctor, but are there risks?”
“Ooooh shit yeah!”
You can imagine – lifting the skin off the
face, with all those nerve endings, glands and things. And that’s just in the
immediate area.
Here’s the serious bit. In 2010 a woman
named Wang Bei went in for this surgery in the city of Wuhan. You could
question whether she really needed it, along with some other work she'd already had done to widen her eyes and lengthen her chin (this one is done with an insert). She wasn’t some saggy old thing. She was
24 at the time and, by most standards, attractive. She had the world at her
feet, having won China’s version of the Idol
talent shows, Super Girl, with her singing.
Still, she became convinced her cheeks needed re-doing. She and her mother
decided to have the procedure done together. During surgery, complications
arose. A lot of blood got into Wang Bei’s windpipe and she died on the table.
If there has been a more pointless loss of a life outside of war, I’d like to
hear it. (PS: Her mother’s surgery went smoothly).
Not of the hair but the legs. This goes on
in other countries but became very popular here several years ago.
Height comes into things often in China,
where, save for former basketball Yao Ming, the average person is quite short
by western standards. Quite often, jobs demand minimum heights. Lonely hearts
classifieds are sprinkled with demands for that certain special someone to be
of a certain height. One spotted recently in the Shanghai Morning Post had a 36-year-old,
176 centimetre (5’9”) man calling for a woman who was 30 and 163 centimetres
(5’4”), not to be too picky or anything.
Shortness was considered incurable until
the advent of a leg-lengthening technique pioneered by Russian surgeon Gavril
Ilizarov, which took off in China in the late 1990s.
The procedure requires that the patient’s
leg bones be sawn through, usually below the knee, before an adjustable metal
frame is applied to the outside. Patients, lying down for a few months, then
turn knobs on the frames to increase the gaps where the bones were cut, which
get filled in by new bone growth. Eventually, they can have their legs lengthened
by up to 15cm (six inches), though the average is around nine centimetres (3.5
inches).
The pitfalls can range from patients
looking a bit funny, somewhat out of proportion, to cases where the operation
has gone disastrously wrong. Twisted legs, feet pointing off at odd angles, and
re-breakages caused by patients trying to walk again too soon are among the
many hazards.
The problems grew sufficiently worrying for
the government to ban the procedure in 2006. However, with a large amount of
illegal clinics in operation, it would be no stretch to say the operation would
still be possible if desired badly enough.
THE STATS:
THE STATS:
China now performs more plastic surgery
than any other country except the USA and Brazil. According to the Economist, there were 1.3 million licensed
procedures carried out in China in 2010. Factor in the unlicensed ones and
China probably leads the world. One problem is that doctors are poorly paid at
public hospitals and so will often moonlight at unlicensed clinics. At People’s
Ninth Hospital in Shanghai, the city’s busiest plastic surgery centre, there
were 50,000 cosmetic operations in 2011 – a 50 per cent increase in five years.
That there are so many unlicensed clinics also
means cosmetic surgery is available to the rich and the not-so-rich. So there
are also many people, particularly women, who hope plastic surgery can help
them leave the lower classes by “marrying-up”. Whatever the reasons, it’s a
huge growth industry.
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