If you are a tall foreigner living in or visiting China, don’t be surprised if you’re told by a Chinese person that you are very lucky and must have been a really good person in a past life. Why? Some Chinese believe that if you are tall in this life it means you are being rewarded for many acts of kindness you have done in the past and you are blessed.
It’s a great sentiment, if a touch fanciful.
Being tall (1.9 meters and over), you get accustomed to towering over most people and hearing regular comments about your height - mostly complimentary.
In China the desire to be taller is high (excuse the pun), despite people’s genetic make-up. It’s a desire driven by the sheer volume of folk competing for partners, promotions and prime job offerings, where any advantage is sought in order to get a foot in the door. And with the vast numbers of job seekers competing for positions, recruiters behind those doors can afford to be picky. The word on the street is height means rapid advancement through the ranks. Many young professionals hold the common belief that taller people have more opportunity for promotion in the desperate climb up the corporate ladder.
A Chinese friend of mine who spends his life scanning the jobs-vacant columns and taking part in interviews, told me that height is often one of the criteria for the better positions. He said there is an increasing number of employers calling for women to be over 1.65 meters and men over 1.7 meters as part of the job requirements. Height nearly always has nothing to do with the type of work involved, but it’s all about image. In a country where the average height for both men and women is far lower than this standard, it’s making the going tougher for job seekers.
Even in the marriage stakes Chinese women prefer their men taller, if online forums are to be believed, and men in turn seek taller women to avoid the risk of having short children. A vicious circle indeed.
But times are slowly changing and as nutrition improves across the country and calcium loaded products like cheese, yogurt and milk become part of the staple diet of children, young Chinese are growing away from their vertically challenged past and beginning to rise up - literally, in the height stakes.
Despite all the adoration your collective centimeters may invite, being tall in China has its definite downside. Bumping your head on subway doors, rails and hand-holds is a regular occurrence, not to mention squeezing into often cramped restaurant seating. Also, in a country where public transport and travel is an essential part of life, try contorting a big frame into the kindergarten seats and spaces available on buses, trains and aircraft, etc. It’s excruciating and you’ll be casting jealous glances over at the Chinese commuter comfortably reclining in the seat next to you. I guess no one is ever satisfied with what they’ve got.
