A patient following double eyelid, nose-lift and face-reshaping surgery at Shanghai Time.
Competition for jobs is forcing
Dr. Yuhua Liao, also a manager at the Shanghai Time Plastic Surgery Hospital, claims that business is up 25 per cent on last year.
“Now it's time for young people to execute their plastic surgery dreams,” says Liao, “Many white-collar workers have lost their jobs because of the recession, so they are now facing enormous pressure to get back to work again.”
Liao predicts this year's six-million university graduates will face one of the toughest job markets in years. Women, who make up three-quarters of her patients, will find it particularly hard to land a job.
“Beauty - for women particularly – plays such a big part in young university graduates' job-hunting process,” says Liao, who stresses she would "recruit a prettier nurse with the same qualities as one who wasn't so pretty".
According to a recent study by the Centre for Women's Law and Legal Services of Peking University, one in four women surveyed said they had failed to get a job because of gender, a fifth said salaries were cut if they became pregnant and 11 per cent lost jobs when they had a family.
Miss Jin is one of the hospital’s growing numbers of satisfied customers. The 22-year-old underwent double-eyelid surgery straight after graduating from
“As a girl, having bigger eyes make me feel much more confident,” she says. “Many of my friends at university have done similar surgeries so I really need to stay competitive.”
Double-eyelid is one of the top two procedures at Shanghai Time. An extra crease is inserted into the eyelid to make the eyes appear larger. The other popular operation is a nose-lift – inserting a bridge in the nose by using a part of the rib.
Though women make up three-quarters of Shanghai Time's patients, cosmetic surgery is not just a girl thing. Mr Zhang, 21, a costume-design student from the Shanghai Institute of Arts and Technology, says
So Zhang went to Shanghai Time for help, and was given a facial-skin-softening treatment to get rid of his acne. The wannabe designer says he is very happy with the improvement and is hopeful of his job prospects and his chances of finding a girlfriend.
The number of elderly patients is booming too: “When parents bring their children in for surgeries, many ask for beauty advice in passing and end up coming back,” Dr. Liao says.
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“Beautification is now a successful and popular industry in this country,” Dr. Liao says. “It's almost unthinkable that ten per cent of our patients are now from overseas where 20 years ago plastic surgery in China was something only top actors would have access to.”
She says foreign patients come in for popular green tea and acupuncture diet procedures, experimenting with the Chinese version of a healthy diet, and many have left satisfied.
Also, every year
No wonder Dr. Liao feels the future of the beautification business is bright: “Ten years ago, Shanghai Time was only a part of a university-sponsored hospital, but now we are completely independent and rank among the top three best plastic surgery hospitals in
“I walked out of my retirement five years ago to work here,” says the former paediatrician. “I'm enjoying the moment and the success, so I am not looking forward to the day I get retired for the second time.”
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