Archive for ‘Chinese teenager’

05/09/2019

Chinese teenager who lost her hair from stress of chasing grades sparks debate about pressure on young people

  • Doctor who helped 13-year-old girl recover says demands on her to do well at school induced condition
  • Weibo poll reveals that 68 per cent of participants had hair loss in school
Studies and polls suggest stress leading to hair loss is a big health concern in China. Photo: Alamy
Studies and polls suggest stress leading to hair loss is a big health concern in China. Photo: Alamy

When the 13-year-old girl walked into the hospital in southern China around eight months ago, she was almost completely bald, and her eyebrows and eyelashes had gone.

“The patient came with a hat on and did not look very confident,” Shi Ge, a dermatologist at the Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, told the Pear Video news portal.

The girl had done well in primary school but her grades dropped in middle school, Shi said.

Under parental pressure to do well, the girl pushed herself harder, but the stress resulted in severe hair loss.

With time and medical treatment, the teen’s hair grew back but her story left a lasting impression, raising awareness of the increasing number of young people in China seeking treatment for stress-induced hair loss, according to Chinese media reports.

Jia Lijun, a doctor at Shenzhen Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, told state-run Xinhua News Agency in May that aside from genetics, factors such as stress in work, study and life would result in endocrine imbalances which affected the cycle of hair growth.

And in January, a survey of 1,900 people by China Youth Daily found that 64.1 per cent of people aged between 18 and 35 said they had hair loss resulting from long and irregular working hours, insomnia, and mental stress.

Hits and myths: stress and hair loss
Shi said that an increasing number of young people had come to her for treatment of hair loss in recent years, and those working in information technology and white-collar jobs were the two biggest groups.

“They usually could not sleep well at night due to high pressure or had an irregular diet because of frequent business trips,” Shi said.

A Weibo poll on Wednesday revealed that 68 per cent out of 47,000 respondents said they had had serious hair loss when they were in school. About 22 per cent said they noticed after starting their careers, while only 5 per cent said it happened after they entered middle age.

More than half of the Chinese students who took part in a China Youth Daily survey said they had hair loss. Photo Shutterstock
More than half of the Chinese students who took part in a China Youth Daily survey said they had hair loss. Photo Shutterstock

Research published in 2017 by AliHealth, the health and medical unit of the Alibaba Group, found that 36.1 per cent of Chinese people born in the 1990s had hair loss, compared to the 38.5 per cent born in the 1980s. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.

The teenager’s experience sparked a heated discussion on Weibo, with users recounting similar cases and some voicing their panic.

“My niece’s hair was gone while she was in high school and has not recovered, even after she graduated from university. This makes her feel more and more inferior,” one user said.

Hong Kong’s schoolchildren are stressed out – and their parents are making matters worse

Another said: “I lost a small portion of my hair during the high school entrance exam, but that is already scary enough for a girl in her adolescence.”

“I had to quit my job and seek treatment,” said a third, who adding that he also suffered from very serious hair loss a few months ago because of high pressure.

Source: SCMP

22/07/2019

Chinese teenager who drove seaplane into car park railing may have bright career as pilot

  • Schoolboy learned to taxi aircraft by watching repair crews
  • Stunt won him admiration of pilots and prospect of learning to fly
A Chinese teenager’s efforts to fly a plane ended with a costly crash but might have set him on the path to becoming a pilot. Photo: Weibo
A Chinese teenager’s efforts to fly a plane ended with a costly crash but might have set him on the path to becoming a pilot. Photo: Weibo
A Chinese teenager who crashed a seaplane into a railing at a lakeside car park in eastern Zhejiang province may have pranked his way into a career as a pilot.
The 13-year-old was caught on camera as he took two planes from their Taihu Lake hangar under cover of darkness on Monday morning, Dushi Express reported on Friday.
The schoolboy, from nearby Huzhou city, spent part of last weekend watching staff at the SeaRey base work on repairs and maintenance. Security camera footage showed him arriving there on an electric bike just after midnight on Sunday.
He then dragged a 450kg (990lbs) plane from its hangar, jumped into the cockpit, started the engine and drove it across a car park, hitting a crash barrier as he tried to make a turn.
The boy gained access to the plane under the cover of darkness. Photo: Weibo
The boy gained access to the plane under the cover of darkness. Photo: Weibo

Abandoning the plane, he went back to the hangar and took another for three circuits of the car park before fleeing on his bike.

The teenager caused 8,000 yuan (US$1,200) worth of damage to the 1.88 million-yuan seaplane, the report said.

His parents only learned of their son’s trip when police called on Monday evening and a payment of 2,000 yuan towards the repair bill was negotiated, it said.

Chinese pranksters’ subway landmine stunt blows up in their faces
The SeaRey base director, surnamed He, was quoted as saying that starting and taxiing the plane involved a few simple steps, but that it would have been impossible for the boy to fly it as that required professional piloting skills and 30 hours of training on the flying boat itself.

But he praised the teenager for being observant.

“We pilots all admired him,” the director said, adding that he would like the boy to train at the base and become a pilot.

Source: SCMP

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