Height extending surgery in the Western media, again

On June 6, a Florida TV station broadcast a news item and published an article (online here) about height-extending surgery in China:

Xia breaks his patient’s legs, then attaches metal pins to the separated bones, which are held in place by metal frames around the patient’s legs…

…The patient then has to twist a knob daily to drag the ends of broken bone apart gradually, encouraging new bone to grow to bridge the gap as the fracture heals, resulting in longer bones, and a taller person, according to the report.

Well it seems that this is one China story that can be used again and again and again when Western media outlets need a weird news item. Below is a Danwei post written by Joel Martinsen, originally published in April this year:

Writing about height
The Chinese are stereotypically short, right? So it’s really ironic that there are height requirements on all kinds of jobs, and that people will undergo surgery to increase their chances, right? Western newspapers seem to think so.

Every year or so the English-language press rediscovers a rare Chinese operation to increase height. The L.A. Times, in its March 31 issue, is the latest to run what has become a cliched story. Comparing it to a New York Times article from May 2002, we find:

– Bad pun for a title: check

– A pretty, college-educated 20-something woman goes under the knife: check

– Comments from Dr. Xia Hetao: check

– Foreign Ministry has height requirements: check

– Warnings from western doctors: check

– Reference to how short Deng Xiaoping was: check

Then there’s the Guardian from 2003, with “A Tall Order,” and Time Asia from back in 2001, with “High Hopes,” whose stories are basically the same. Sure, human interest is a nice break from “Tall Buildings!!”-type stories, but, you know, I bet there’s other interesting human stuff around, too.