Big eyes, big noses, big breasts and now humungous Hummers – China seems to be indulging an obsession with size, just when the rest of the world is learning the virtues of moderation.
In Shanghai, for example, business is booming on eyelifts, noselifts, chestlifts and other surgery aimed at enlarging classically Asian narrow eyes, flat noses and unobtrusive mammary glands. At the Shanghai Time Plastic Surgery Hospital, Dr Liao Yuhua says business is up 40 per cent since the end of last year – not despite the global economic crisis, but because of it.
Half her business is job-related: “Many of our customers are white-collar workers, many have lost their jobs, so they have time to execute their plastic surgery dreams,” says the retired paediatrician, whose genially wrinkled face and ankle socks that bag around her feet hardly seem like anyone's clichéd view of a plastic surgeon. “They want to be more competitive when they go for the next interview,” she says, adding that famously pushy Chinese parents are very “supportive” of this trend.