A year ago this month, Li Ping, an attractive 23-year-old from Beijing, split up with her boyfriend, checked into a clinic and paid doctors £1,600 to break her legs just because she felt a little on the short side.
Over the next few weeks, the fractured ends of her tibias were braced, pinned and gradually screwed apart to extend the bones as they fused together again.
Miss Li was and remains an enthusiast for an extreme form of the current Asian fashion for cosmetic surgery - artificial leg extensions.
She is also an example of the dangers posed by an expanding and often unscrupulous private health care system in China, in which state-trained doctors can nowadays branch out for money with very little supervision or regulation.
Miss Li's legs failed to grow together properly. Despite the dramatic nature of the surgery, she was sent home in 20 days. Six months later she was in great pain and still unable to walk properly.
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