WHEN, IN NOVEMBER, French doctors grafted a nose, chin and lips onto a woman who'd been savaged by her dog, the beauty world reassessed the potential of new faces.
'I've been watching the face transplant with interest,' says Hong Kong plastic surgeon Daniel Lee. 'With such techniques, it's only a matter of time before it becomes a part of the mainstream.'
According to Xinhua News Agency, more than one million mainlanders had cosmetic surgery in 2004 - three times the number for the previous year.
So popular is the procedure that several competitions on the mainland offer cosmetic surgery to whoever is judged the ugliest competitor. Zhang Di won US$16,000 worth of surgery in Shanghai in 2004. The result was a more western look: her round face was lengthened by pushing back her hairline; her square jaw was trimmed and the bridge of her nose was augmented. 'The overall goal was to make her nose higher, like a westerner's,' said her surgeon.
And it's not only women. Zhang Yinghua, 24, won himself surgery after being judged the ugliest male in the same competition several months later. And another TV cosmetic-surgery show, Lovely Cinderella, attracted more than 30 million viewers for the final, for which 14 contestants had surgery.
Nowadays, cosmetic surgery 'is no big deal', says a 42-year-old Hongkonger who asks to be known only as Samantha. 'I don't plan to grow old gracefully. I'll fight it all the way,' she says. 'If you've got the money, just go ahead and do it.'