The crime of starvation

IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON, and Yanyan was milling around a department store in Kowloon Bay. In full view of shoppers, she grabbed a pair of sandals, stuffed them in her bag and strolled towards the door. But as she stepped outside, a sales assistant stopped her.

'It was as if she had woken me up and I realised 'that' had happened again,' Yanyan says. 'I begged her: 'Please don't report it to the police, I don't want to be like that, I can't control myself'.' But the police were called and she was arrested.

Yanyan is 18 and for three years has struggled with the psychological disease anorexia nervosa, which leads sufferers to starve themselves, sometimes to death. At her lowest point, the Form Seven student weighed just 22 kilograms. She is still so thin her skin sinks between her cheek and jaw bones and her legs resemble two bamboo sticks. The top of her head is almost bald. Her menstruation has long stopped.

Yanyan is one of the estimated three per cent of Hong Kong women - in their teens and 20s - who suffer from an eating disorder. The illnesses include not just anorexia, but also bulimia, where sufferers purge themselves of food by vomiting or taking laxatives. Then there are combinations of both, where patients starve, then binge and make themselves sick. Other common foodrelated disorders include compulsive eating and bingeing.

Yanyan is also one of 20 per cent of eating disorder patients in Hong Kong who steal, according to the Hong Kong Eating Disorders Centre. Most of them shoplift items that are related to their illness, such as diet pills and food, while others, like Yanyan, take things that are seemingly useless to them - the shoes she took were one size too small.

Since the 1980s, Western psychiatrists have recognised the problem of shoplifting among anorexia sufferers, especially those with bulimia. In Hong Kong, most are females in their teens and 20s and come from all walks of life. Local cases have included a nurse, a secondary school student, a university graduate and a professional who was arrested for stealing $50 worth of food.