As I suspected, the issue of height is of significance not only to me as an oversized visitor but also to Chinese people too. As I think I mentioned, I saw some tall younger men and women in Beijing in the North. In general I have found people here in Xiamen in the South are not quite as tall, though I noticed that younger people here are often taller than their parent’s generation.
Yesterday in the city centre I spotted not one but three advertisements on shop windows calling for shop staff. These were all on the windows of clothes shops that were selling relatively expensive clothing, primarily for younger people. An interesting requirement that all the ads included was that the applicants be over a minimum height, in the one here it is 1.60 for women and 1.70 for men. That is to say, they wanted their sales staff to be of an average height or greater. Lynn my exchange partner told me what I suspected: taller young people look more modern, attractive and fashionable in the eyes of many. The shop wanted its staff to look attractive so that people would think the store is a fashionable place that they would like to buy their clothes from. It all makes good commercial logic given the existence of these changing tastes, body sizes and the store’s target customers.
This made me think that my observations on size are quite time specific in that Chinese people are going though a growing phase. I remember when studying in London 10 years ago, being surprised at first at how I was surrounded by tall Koreans and Japanese, as this did not fit my preconceptions. The same changes must be happening here now.
I also remember realising that the British were not always shaped as we are today. This realisation came in the form of a blow to head when as a teenager I took a tour around Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory. I had to bend over double when walking under the decks as the roof is well below today’s head height. Needless to say, one of those low beams got me in the end. I can’t say when exactly diet and the other factors effecting height changed in the UK, it may well have been relatively recently for all I know. In any case, what I now see is that we continue to grow but no longer upwards, now the expansion is mostly lateral, around the waistline. I don’t see too much of that here, at least not just yet. Maybe that is something the people of Xiamen have to look forward to.
