She may not look quite as hefty as a Westerner with a similar fat content–Asians have smaller bones–but her flab presents an equal danger to her health. And her vanity. As she hacks at the rice, she complains about her tummy bulge and hefty rear-end. “By working like a peasant,” she says, “I can lose at least one pound a day.”
Among the growing middle and upper classes of Asia’s newly industrialized societies, obesity has quietly become a major problem. In Hong Kong, one half of the population is considered overweight, according to World Health Organization (WHO) standards. Fully one third of the population is obese. (WHO defines “overweight” and “obese” Asians as those with body-fat percentages of 23 and 28 percent.) But they’re not the only ones. In February a group of international health organizations warned that the entire region is facing “a pandemic of obesity.” Diseases related to obesity are rising rapidly. According to diabetes specialist Dr. Juliana Chan, China now has 18 million people with that disease, which plagues overweight people.
Asia’s changing diet is the root of the problem. Rapid industrialization after World War II created a newly affluent class of consumers, who suddenly found themselves able to afford the rich meats and succulent delicacies denied to their ancestors. At home, Ng and her husband, a successful businessman, dine frequently on suckling pig and dim sum, which is now manufactured in mass quantities. What’s more, with financial success has come a go-go lifesyle–and a growing affinity among Asian’s for Western-style fast food, which has a high fat content. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, there is a higher density of McDonald’s than in most parts of the United States. Children are especially at risk. Most developed Asian cities have little space for them to exercise–and tradition mandates study above all else.
Experts warn that the region is on the verge of a health-care catastrophe. At the Prince Wales Hospital in Hong Kong, out of 2,200 weekly patients, 60 percent receive drugs for diseases related to obesity. And yet, the government has no comprehensive strategy to monitor the maladies. The policy-making process, according to Hong Kong doctors, is in the hands of an older generation that seems unable to comprehend the severity of the threat. But as a new generation of fat children comes of age, weight-related heath problems are expected to increase ever more quickly. “The Hong Kong health-are system will collapse in 10 years unless they do something,” says Juliana Chan, a diabetes specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the situation. Health-related Web sites, low-calorie cooking classes and nutritional food stores have popped up around the region over the past few years. Magazines in Hong Kong are crowded with advertisements for weight-loss centers. Secretaries bandy the benefits of different slimming techniques–including liposuction and cellophane wrap. Traditional practices, such as acupuncture and the breathing exercise qi-gong, are coming into vogue among younger people. Debby Cheung, a 23-year-old clerk, says she lost six pounds in three weeks through acupuncture on her stomach. “Hong Kong girls all want to be thin, like Julia Roberts,” she says.
The Austin Villas farm is one of dozens of health camps now scattered across southeast Asia. Participants travel by ferry to a village in southern China, where the Hong Kong Adventist Hospital runs the camp. They are picked up in vans and driven to a luxurious housing complex. A deep-blue swimming pool shimmers behind high walls. Outside the compound, a bleak expanse of dusty farmland stretches to the horizon; real Chinese farmers trudge by. Inside, the participants are led to a lush, organic farm–stocked with yams, melons, bok choy and rice. “We want them to experience a healthy lifestyle,” says camp director Aaron Liu. “Knowledge is not enough, that’s why we make them go down to the farm. The communists had the right idea.”
Ng and the others pay $350 for a week at the camp and follow a rigorous routine. They rise at dawn, run, work the fields. For meals, they eat mostly what they produce–and count calories fastidiously. “It’s really tough, my stomach is hungry all day, the food is tasteless,” says Cheung Po-lai, 61, an administrator at Hong Kong’s power company. He rubs his huge stomach as testimony. “The first day here I was so hungry, I ate seven pieces of whole wheat toast, and before I realized it, I had used up my quota of calories.” Winnie Kam, a 42-year-old housewife, scans her plate of cooked vegetables disdainfully. “During war you eat yams and sweet potatoes,” she says, lowering her double chin. “These are foods for beggars.”
As they struggle to drop weight, some Asians are re-examining their lives. For Yeung Ka-lei, the introspection was fatal. The 32-year-old Hong Kong secretary jumped to her death on Aug. 29 after an overdose of diet pills triggered what doctors say was a psychosis. She began to take the pills after colleagues laughed at her weight, which was 200 pounds. Deaths linked to diet pills are increasingly common, say doctors. Some practitioners of Chinese traditional arts believe the region has lost its balance in its blind rush for prosperity. “The real disease of Hong Kong people is their pursuit of wealth,” says Tsai Shao-hui, a doctor of Chinese medicine at the On Wo Tong Chinese Health Center. That may be true, but there is no getting that genie back into the bottle. Better that governments and private groups push ahead with health-awarness campaigns. It’s possible to live well and stay healthy, but as the overweight campers will acknowledge, it takes a little discipline.
