Surgery changing the face of China

Surgery changing the face of China

As Western culture spreads through China, more women undergo plastic surgery in the hope of improving their lives.

BY PETER S. GOODMAN

Washington Post Service

SHANGHAI, China - In a special wing of the No. 9 People's Hospital, a mother sits on a bench with her 20-year-old daughter, waiting for a procedure aimed at improving her child's job and marriage prospects.

Once, Chinese mothers bound the feet of their daughters in the name of securing acceptable futures and making them fit brides. On this day, mother and daughter waited for an appointment with a plastic surgeon. For about $118 -- about half of their monthly household income -- he would stitch double folds into the young woman's eyelids, making her eyes appear rounder and, as current fashion dictates, more pleasing.

Three decades ago, when this mother, Tao Fenfang, was 20, she donned a drab uniform at a fish-processing factory and paid no attention to her looks. In those days of doctrinaire communism, vanity was regarded as a form of capitalist decadence. But as Tao's daughter, Chen Yingli, nears graduation from technical school, she is preparing to enter a working world in which obsession with image has become commonplace. In today's China -- a country of rising disposable income and fascination with the products of the rest of the world -- plastic surgery is booming along with the economy.

''Now, society is more and more open, and appearance is becoming increasingly important,'' said Tao, whose income from her job as a security guard combined with her husband's factory wages is about $2,500 per year. ``We think this surgery is a good investment for our daughter. If you're better-looking, you get preferential treatment.''

SURGERIES RISE

A similarly pragmatic calculation underlies the proliferation of plastic surgery throughout China's wealthiest cities. More than 10,000 medical facilities across the country now perform such procedures, according to government statistics. In Beijing, the number of licensed plastic surgery centers jumped from 57 in mid-2003 to more than 100 now, according to the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. At Beijing's Plastic Surgery Hospital, the country's largest such facility, doctors perform 50 procedures daily, about double the number of three years ago and more than triple that of 1999, says Chen Huanran, a doctor. The No. 9 People's Hospital in Shanghai last year performed more than 25,000 cosmetic operations such as face-lifts, liposuction and double-eyelid stitching -- an increase of one-fourth from the year before.

Forty years ago, when the plastic surgery unit at the hospital opened, it focused on accident and burn victims, soldiers wounded in the Korean War and people born with defects. So it went through the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s, when female film stars wrapped their chests in sackcloth lest they appear buxom, which was tantamount to being bourgeois. Now the same white-tiled rooms of the hospital are used to insert silicone implants imported from the United States into the breasts of any woman with $2,500 to spend.

''Young people today accept Western culture,'' said Cao Yilin, who heads the plastic surgery unit at the No. 9 People's Hospital. ``They think the breast is a symbol of the woman, so a woman without a breast is not really a woman.''

Moreover, artificially enhanced breasts have become a status symbol, an indication of an ability to afford the accouterments of a wealthy life.

''Now, no one derides this as capitalist,'' Cao said. ``In China now, the person who has money is seen as someone who ought to be proud.''

MARKETING WINNER

In Beijing, a plain-looking 24-year-old named Hao Lulu was elevated to national celebrity after agreeing to serve as a marketing prop for the EverCare Cosmetic Surgery Hospital and Clinic in exchange for more than $50,000 worth of free treatments.

Last July, as her marathon under the knife began, Hao had double-folds fashioned into her eyelids, bags removed from below her eyes and the bridge of her nose lifted slightly. The next month, surgeons sliced away fat from her lower legs and embellished her breasts. Fall saw fat removed from her thighs, her buttocks lifted up and made rounder. In winter, fat was removed from her cheeks and wrinkles from her neck.

''I just wanted to be more beautiful,'' Hao said.

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