A daughter of struggling shopkeepers, Liu said she was barely able to finish secondary school and was lucky to find decently paid work. “I wouldn’t have been hired if I had been an ugly duckling,” she said. Liu is now worried she will lose her job once she gets older. She has taken evening classes in business management, but believes an attractive appearance is just as important as education.

Liu is aware of the horror stories of botched surgeries. Around the world, risky operations such as “leg-stretching” surgery are rarely used for cosmetic purposes but such operations are popular in China. In efforts to meet height requirements for jobs, men and women have paid tens of thousands of yuan to have their bones broken so that doctors could insert steel pins under the knees and above the ankles, but complications have left dozens of people crippled for life. China’s Ministry of Health has banned some risky cosmetic surgeries, but most private clinics for cosmetic surgery are widely unregulated.

Out of curiosity, I decided to visit a private clinic in Shenzhen. After an hour of walking in circles, I found the clinic on the 18th floor of a rundown residential building with drunk or drugged men sprawled in the hallways. A teenage boy greeted me at the door, and sat me down for the consultation at a flimsy table while his father watched a soap opera a few feet away in the living room. The clinic doubled as their living quarters.

【中国剩女的整容热】相关文章：

★ 离异家庭子女数学差 不善社交

★ 真相了！没结婚没孩子的女性更幸福

★ 专家支招:撞衫的时候该怎么办?

★ 生活中的英国女王是什么样？

★ 生命中的小瞬间

★ 使你早上有活力的3种方法

★ 中国人对奶酪的兴趣开始发酵

★ 为什么成功的投资者善于管理情绪?

★ 园艺工作对健康的4个惊人好处

★ 中国的高铁到底有多先进?