The Barbification of China

In China, if your fancy academic degrees don’t get you a job, then your scalpel-chiselled nose surely will.

In China, if your academic degrees don’t get you a job, then your scalpel-chiselled nose will. At least, that’s the belief driving many Chinese to line up before plastic surgeons. This in an economy that is already believed to be on the road to recovery and to emerge as one of the strongest from the economic crisis, and a country with women as breathtakingly beautiful as Ziyi Zhang (in the picture). The Los Angeles Times reports that while plastic surgeries have recorded a dip in the US since they aren’t covered by insurance, in the Shanghai Time Plastic Surgery Hospital, business is booming. Dr Liao Yuhua, the president of the hospital, told the paper that her team of surgeons often performed as many as 100 procedures a day. When the hospital surveyed patients, it found 50 per cent of the cases were job-related. Pretty much everything from nose jobs to cutting eyelids to reshaping angular faces into smooth goose eggs was in demand. It also mentions that a dozen leading Chinese hospitals recorded similarly good business. China’s official urban jobless rate is 4.2 per cent, but according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the actual figure is likely to be more than double that.  Meanwhile, an Associated Press report says that American graduates are heading to China for better job prospects. So will the Chinese try implanting the American twang now?

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