Word: cm
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...Still determined, Xiaowei visited a Shanghai surgeon who promised the seemingly impossible: to add 7 cm to her height. The leg surgery would be simple, he said, if brutal. He would saw her shin bones, affix metal braces with 16 steel needles to her legs, then slowly stretch the newly forming bone tissue into a longer pair of gams. A steep $11,000 later, Xiaowei found herself in a spartan Shanghai hospital room surveying her scarred but elongated legs. Four months in the dingy ward have left her stir-crazy, but Xiaowei shows off limbs already stretched 4 cm...
...surgeon at Beijing's No. 402 Hospital, is a pioneer of limb-extension surgery for patients disfigured by birth defects or injury. Since he started offering cosmetic leg-lengthening a few years ago, he has performed more than 600 operations. His patients have grown by an average of 9 cm. More than 70% of the women are college educated. Some who have studied overseas felt inferior because of their lack of stature. "For them, the main purpose of the operation is not to improve their physical health," says Xia. "It is to help their psychological growth...
...surgery doesn't always ensure mental well-being. Zhang Wen found she was 4 cm shy of the 1.6-m height requirement for Air China stewardesses. Last year, a surgeon in the central city of Chongqing promised to solve her dilemma for $3,000. After four months' hospitalization and nearly a year of rehab, one of Zhang's legs is 3 cm shorter than the other, causing her to limp. Having spent her savings on the botched operation, Zhang can't afford more surgery. Such malpractice is common in China's booming south, where fly-by-night surgeons take advantage...
...China will always pick the taller woman, even if the shorter person is more talented." When Xiaohong finishes the six-month exercise and rehab program in Beijing, she knows she will have to tell her mother about the extravagant expense. After all, you can't hide an 8-cm growth spurt. But Xiaohong's not worried. "When I am tall, I will be able to face many obstacles," she says?even the wrath of a parsimonious mother...
...five- or six-year-old boys dressed in black vests and bin Laden T shirts, their heads covered by black balaclavas, race in and out of the grimy front room of the Laskar headquarters repeatedly shouting "Assalamu' alaikum" (may peace be with you) as they wield machetes, 30-cm daggers and loaded shotguns. Their antics draw an abrupt, approving laugh from Ichsan. Obviously the boys' role model, the stocky 32-year-old is clad entirely in black, down to the socks he wears under his army-issue combat boots. He says he has just returned from what he calls...