By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: Is there any awareness of eating disorders in China?
When I was teaching college students, many of the girls (and one or two boys) said things that were frankly alarming about their eating habits; things that would cause huge amounts of concern if said in my home country, but here are just accepted as normal, or brushed off because 'every girl wants to lose weight‘!
I met one girl who missed class for two weeks because she was just lying still and not eating as a way to lose weight and didn't have energy to move, loads of people skipped meals and took diet teas, and when I had food poisoning and spent a whole week vomiting/ shitting and became really thin and sickly, I was congratulated!
Someone going to such extreme lengths to lose weight would be classified as possibly having an eating disorder in Europe: does the concept even exist here?
9 years 45 weeks ago in Health & Safety - China
Yeah
people think the food that they serve will not hurt them
on the serious side you can blame big business for telling people what they should look like then stuffing them with Coke and KFC
there is no simple answer but we all need to try and help in some way or another.
maybe talk about healthy foods and bad foods and see if they know the answers
good luck and more power to you for trying
Yes and no, I was told by locals that being really skinny (at the point of seeing bones) is healthy (supposedly because less fat = better). Some other people called me fat, me, a gym addict, they are probably not used of seeing muscular people over here. There is also this girl in my previous office who choose one day to stop eating in order to lose weight, she lasted for 5 days before falling on the floor, we had to call an ambulance, she had to be fed by a pipe (no idea what's the name in English) at the hospital. My ex-girlfriend who is slim but not skinny and actually got shapes (hips and breasts) was once called fat by a skinny girl who looks like a man (not shapes at all).
In short Chinese are aware but the skinny craze over here is so intense that people will not hesitate to put their health on danger to meet standards of "beauty".
I think lying still for two weeks is not an eating disorder, it's stupidity.
I saw a chart in a hospital recently, the classic pyramid of what to eat. Way outdated information. What to eat is not current, I recently also saw a family member feed her 6 month old grandson noodles (without anything) while he was lying on his back, completely passive. Erh, at 6 months, aren't kids sitting up, being able to grab simple food themselves. All kids in my family have done that.
Eating disorders are mental illnesses. As such, China has no good care for the mentally ill. You can go buy happy pills over the counter, but you can't find a trained psychologist.
DrMonkey:
Yup. The amount of depressions going untreated (apart from liberal use of happy pills) is huge. I've seen some case first hands, poor souls who had zero support for years, and the familly was not exactly helping ("but your husband is rich, why you are not hapy ?").
Lord_hanson:
My 6 month old baby can sit up and grab things. People seem to think he is some sort of superbaby for it. They then shrug it off as the child having foreign blood.
Eorthisio:
I have seen 10 years old kids unable to tie their shoes, and not a few, many! The same with 5 years old who couldn't eat by themselves or still being pushed in strollers by their parents. This is called the precious snowflake syndrome, kind of the opposite from the little emperors who are fat bullies, the previous snowflakes were so coddled that they can't do anything by themselves.
Scandinavian:
@Eorthiso. Snowflake or emperor. Both stem from the same complete lack of putting boundaries for children. I am not sure they are so different, and I am sure you can find plenty of little fat kids who basically can do nothing but scream at their parents to do stuff. It's like having a cat, you become a servant to the little bastard.
@Lord Hanson: It's really a shame that they attribute your child having normal skills with him having foreign blood, this shows ignorance about skin color (flaming racism if you will) and it also shows a severe lack of self confidence in the Chinese people, why can they not think they are just as good as the rest?
I think lying still for two weeks is not an eating disorder, it's stupidity.
I saw a chart in a hospital recently, the classic pyramid of what to eat. Way outdated information. What to eat is not current, I recently also saw a family member feed her 6 month old grandson noodles (without anything) while he was lying on his back, completely passive. Erh, at 6 months, aren't kids sitting up, being able to grab simple food themselves. All kids in my family have done that.
Eating disorders are mental illnesses. As such, China has no good care for the mentally ill. You can go buy happy pills over the counter, but you can't find a trained psychologist.
Zero awareness of anything, one of my 10 year old students is being starved by her mother. Mention it to other teachers, blank stares and "but she is so thin".
Two of my friends were Med Grads, one was skipping meals sometimes for an entire day. I explained to both of them that this was not healthy. She soon began fainting one time while she was even 'in the middle' of using the bathroom. Eventually they came to me asking my advice as to why could she be fainting so often. Her doctor had prescribed her medicine that wasn't' working (taking most types of medicine while not eating is worse, I'm not doctor but I know this). She would not believe me, so I told her to try it for one week. At the end of the week she called me and told me she hadn't fainted that week. But she thought it was the medicine taking effect. And resumed her old habits of not eating and soon began fainting again. Between the 2 of them, they could not figure out or see what was spelled out right in front of them.
Sometimes I think they are just brainwashe to reject anything a foreigner says.
Side note: Have you ever talked to a Chinese teacher? They are the most ignorant of anyone in this country.
royceH:
I have a student (whose mother is my wife's friend) and this poor girl is being starved by her stupid mother. She's also regularly exposed to physical violence between her parents and generally neglected. And the girl is really lovely. My wife has told the mother some facts and pleaded with her to treat her daughter better.
I've even suggested we take her in.
I once talked with a very Chinese guy about beauty standards, he said that a beautiful girl should be thin, sickly thin even. So it's no wonder people go to these stupid extremes to get that "recently released from a WW2 concentration camp"-look. Add to that no knowledge about medicine, nutrition, physiology or health as well as short sightedness and you have the perfect retard-cocktail when it comes to health and body issues.
Well... I'd say they know about eating disorders, but their definition of beauty is too firmly planted to make them change their ideas towards eating disorders.
I remember a sentence from something I was watching on Youku. (okay.. I don't have youtube, no judging, please.) The sentence: 楚王爱细腿，宫中饿死了
"The King of Chu loved skinny legs, [so] the [people in the] palace was starving." No idea when the country of Chu existed, but this craze for super skinny legs has been planted for a long time. I think that the vogue of the Tang dynasty was more akin to plump women, but that seems to have just been an exception in Chinese culture.
Burak43:
Not only did they like 'em plum during Tang, but they also liked active women, horse riding, archery and so on (this started in Song), this is also a big contrast to the rest of Chinese history.
jetfire9000:
Thanks for the added analysis. Ah, how great it would have been if those tastes in women persisted! We'd have tons of independent, confident, sexy and fit women who have more things to talk about instead of silently staring at a phone with an over makeup'ed face. And probably wouldn't many of those girls that add you on Wechat, while expecting you to start the conversation.
I've even seen Chinese guys adhering to that beauty standard too, even skipping meals just like girls do. They're not gay, but they do have effeminate characteristics.... And in any gym, even the macho chinese guys always skip leg days. I've been told my legs are too thick.
However, the older , hardened generation from the ole Communist days have complimented me on my "thick legs." Seems that old people have a more consistent understanding of what "healthy is!
An HK girl back when I was visiting HK seemed to dig it before too, she thought I was a rugby player playing in the game that weekend. ;)
Mainland girls and guys, bleeeh, super skinny is the ideal. And even if you're not skinny, you better have skinny legs.
Hell No..
They eat whatever they can get their hands on....
What I've noticed is that girls almost unanimously want to be thinner, and think thinner is better. By "thinner", I mean thinner than whatever is current. That is, there is not real understanding of a goal (or if there is, it's so dangerously thin as to be lethal).
I don't know what extent parents play a role in this, but I would guess that it'd be pretty big. One girl told me her dad would pay her 10,000 yuan to lose around 12 kg, which she absolutely didn't need to lose. I also hear "My mom/dad (though more often mom, it seems) says I'm too fat and need late."
I've also noticed that skipping meals is pretty common. I've straight up told girls who have been going on these unhealthy diets that they were, well, unhealthy, and that they need to eat enough. The problem seems to be that "you are too thin" and "you need to eat more" is not taken as serious advice, but so often thought of as a compliment.
It is viewed the same as if you told someone, "You are too intelligent."
As for the guys, there seems to be a very visible generation gap with regards to weight. For the older (40s and above), being overweight seems to be no big deal. Middle aged dudes will unselfconsciously roll up their shirts, or just go without, exposing generous beer bellies. and consider gorging on food at social gatherings to be a good thing. It shows you are wealthy enough to afford food (and for men, looks have been less important than ability to provide material resources).
For younger guys, though, thinness is almost as paramount as for girls. I've seen plenty a college age boy as thin as the college age girls. Boys might not talk about it as much (since guys are supposed to hide their vulnerabilities, including body insecurities. Girls will say they feel too fat, while boys will be silent about feeling too fat), but they do feel the pressure. The new beauty standard for guys is the K-pop stars, skinny and androgynous, and the guys know this.
There could also be a backlash, or reaction to the parents' generation. If their dads are rocking spare tires, then they want to go the opposite way.
As for the disorder aspect... you can blame "face" partly at least. Like with mental illnesses, and many other problems, it's seen as better to ignore it than address it, to avoid embarrassment. Even if guys and girls are starving themselves into the hospital, saying there is an epidemic of body image problems, looks shaming, and eating disorders means there are problems, and problems are disharmonious. Better to just pretend that the girl refusing to eat every other day, or the boy suffering from depression because he doesn't look like this hour's most popular K-pop star, are completely healthy.
