China's obsession with height is driving parents to crime (7 photos)

Tall means handsome and successful. This simple truth is relevant for many countries, girls love tall people, but in China the pursuit of height takes on monstrous forms. However, like the girls’ pursuit of thinness.





No one can keep up with bamboo, BUT THE CHINESE ARE TRYING

The average height of 19-year-old men in China, according to data for 2020, is 175.7 centimeters. Not bad growth actually, not that low. Among adults, the average height is lower - 169.7 centimeters.

Why is this an acute problem specifically for China?

Social competition that is very much based on appearance. Social competition exists everywhere, but only in China and South Korea, beautiful and tall people obviously receive much more privileges, and employers do not even try to offset this with beautiful excuses.



The height of a girl working at a hotel reception is measured.

And for guys this is important, because there is an insane competition for brides, and they can afford to choose among the tall and rich. Being wealthy is no longer enough.

Although it all started much earlier. Back in 1989, sociologist Li Yinhe studied 300 newspaper advertisements for a partner and concluded that, compared with other cultures, both Chinese men and women disproportionately listed height as a requirement for a spouse.





Children in China are measured at the beginning of the school year, at the end of summer, at any free time.

It is still common for job postings to openly specify minimum height and other appearance requirements for non-labor positions such as sales, manager, even nursing. Well, you didn’t have to choose a nurse based on appearance!

One day the Chinese rebelled. A guy sued the People's Bank of China in Chengdu for advertising an administrator position that required male candidates to be taller than 168 centimeters and female candidates to be taller than 155 centimeters.



Girls are less likely to be injected with growth hormones, but at least that's a good thing

But it didn’t work out, the court didn’t satisfy the claim, and the bank simply removed these lines from the advertisement. Without actually removing the requirements.

How to make a child grow (by violent means)

All parents want a successful future for their children, so they abuse them in various inhumane ways.

Over the past 10 years, the income of the Chinese manufacturer of human growth hormones has grown more than 100 times! Parents give these hormones to their children often without a prescription. And this is simply prohibited, because it is essentially illegal hormonal therapy.



This is a famous Chinese giant, in the photo the boy is 11 years old, he is with friends near school

Moreover, such growth grafts cost 10,000 yuan per month.

Although “injections to increase height” are one of the most extreme methods of increasing a child’s height. There is a second method - no less tough.

Block growing up!

There is a method for assessing “bone age” in school-age children. That is, the child is assessed when puberty will begin and it is blocked with drugs to prolong the period of rapid bone growth that will slow down with the onset of puberty.



How tall are you is almost the third question after earnings and dating positions?

Chinese clinics take 100 x-rays of children's bones per day from various hospitals and.

Folk remedies are for the weak

Poor parents buy calcium tablets so that their children take them regularly. And they sign up their sons for stretching sports and demand that they do pull-ups every day. But these are all flowers; the Chinese trust traditional medicine more.

The most famous is to give the child fresh chicken blood. In villages, when a chicken is slaughtered, they still give the baby something to drink to help him grow.



I’ve already written about chicken blood injections; it’s been a cult in China since the 60s.

I don't know which method exactly, but it worked. China is ranked as the third fastest growing country in terms of average population growth. But it seems to me that the Chinese simply began to eat more varied foods, and not just grass, as is often the case among Asians. So generation after generation began to grow up.