Getting Under the Skin of Shanghai’s Cosmetic Surgery Scene

More often than not, the loud music you’re hearing each evening on Shanghai’s streets comes form a hair salon. Beyond the music fashionable bouffant-ed staff, style, manicure and trim local and expatriate alike. Of course, this flurry of hair, shampoo, peroxide and moisturizer is not the only source of beautification. Expat magazines, subway car walls, ShanghaiExpat itself, are littered with advertisements for the latest non-surgical and surgical cosmetic surgeries offered by a variety of clinics and hospitals throughout the city. Despite personal judgments or opinions this is a very real way an increasing number of men and women seek to maintain or enhance their perceived beauty. So what does the world of cosmetic surgery in Shanghai look like?

Let’s begin with a little clarification: plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery are not exactly the same thing. Plastic surgeons help patients with deformities, birth defects and those who’ve suffered trauma due to burns, for example. Cosmetic surgeons, on the other hand, work with clients seeking enhancements for personal purposes without medical need. The psychological trauma of sagging jowls is no easy event to accept! 

The three million procedures performed in China annually has the country sitting pretty as the second largest executor of cosmetic surgeries in the world. The United States currently holds the first position, and Brazil follows at a close third according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. The society was founded in 1970 at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and is holding its 21st Congress in Geneva this year. The most recent statistics are representative of 75 percent of surgeries done as of 2009. Current global projections of around 8.5 million non-surgical and 8.5 million surgical procedures help to put these numbers in context.

Of course this pursuit can come at a price. Former contestant on “Super Girl” and Chinese pop star Wang Bei died during a procedure designed to reshape her jaw in 2010. Stories like this have done little to slow the growing number of Chinese and Westerners who turn to the scalpel, in hopes that it will turn back the effects of time or triumph over cruel genetic fate. And it isn’t only woman. Back in 2004, Zhang Yinghua won a contest held by Shanghai Kinway Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery to become Shanghai’s “first man-made handsome guy.” Seven major facial surgeries would set the hospital back 300,000 RMB and give Zhang the movie star good looks he was after.

The Chinese aren’t the only ones taking advantage of Shanghai’s state of the art cosmetic medical system. Owner of Bioscor International, a clinic here in Shanghai, Mr. Anthony Lin described some differences between Chinese and Western clients. “Treatments in our clinic [for Western women] would be mostly botox and fillers, hair removal and laser for skin rejuvenation. The Chinese are looking for botox and fillers as well, but their intention is a bit different. They will use filler, not to fill lines, but to have a higher bridge of the nose, thicker lips or a longer chin…We do a [botox] treatment on the jaw muscle to slim their face so they look better on camera or in photos. Western woman, they are more conservative. They might be looking for something more realistic for a problem they have been facing for a long time such as liposuction as Westerners are usually bigger.”