Toward a taller and healthier generation in China

I took off my shoes and stepped on the weight and height scale as instructed by the doctor who was carrying out my physical checkup. The screen flickered for a second or two before a pleasant electronic girl's voice announced: "Weight 70 kilograms, height 169 centimeters."

"That must be wrong. I was over 170 cm last year," I tried to argue with the "girl", but got no response. After learning that my height had been 173 cm when I was younger, the doctor smiled and told me that it's normal for people to shrink as they age. I knew that, but, still, losing a centimeter within a year made me sad.

When I was a student 50 years ago, all of us children wanted to grow up to be tall young men. But insufficient food and poor nutrition put paid to many of those dreams.

I recall that of the more than 100 boys in my grade at the boarding high school I went to in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, the tallest one reached no more than 178 centimeters upon graduating at age 19.

I could reach just 173 cm, but I felt proud that it was well above the average. That partially explains why I cared so much about losing even 1 cm in old age.

A survey in 1980 found that the average height of Chinese male adults was 165.8 cm and that of female adults 155.3 cm.

We used to be told that genes decide our height, but we now know that many other factors such as nutrition and physical exercise also play important parts.

Thanks to improved living conditions and increasing enthusiasm for sports over the past five decades, the average height of Chinese people is rising year by year.

Though the figures in different surveys vary, everyone agrees that since 2020, the average height of Chinese adult males is around 170 cm and that of Chinese adult females close to 160 cm.

While this gives us an idea about general height in a large and populous country such as China, it fails to show the disparity across age groups and regions.

Statistics show that of the thousands of students undergoing physical examinations for the annual national college entrance examination or gaokao in Beijing, the average height of 18-year-old boys was found to be 177 cm and of girls 164 cm. In some northern provinces, the average height of youngsters was found to be higher than in Beijing while in some southern regions it was lower. Different food habits and genes probably play a role in this.

Despite carrying our humble genes — my wife stands 161 cm tall — my son grew to be 183 cm tall. It must have been the result of physical exercises and sufficient nutrition — my boy used to drink milk like water for years and once claimed he was tired of eating shrimp when he was a kid.

I believe the free or discounted meals available to rural students during their nine-year compulsory education period have helped increase their average height.

In the past decade or so, the average height of children in rural areas has risen at a higher rate than that of children in urban areas.

While the growth in height is good news, many families are more worried about seeing their children grow horizontally more than vertically because of overeating and lack of physical exercise.

The obesity rate in the 6-17 age group in China is 7.9 percent and the overweight rate is around 11 percent.

This time, the rate is higher in urban areas than in rural areas.

Educational authorities have been taking measures to handle this problem, requiring schools to arrange at least one physical exercise class per day, extending class breaks so that students can relax, encouraging after-school sports interest groups and requiring school canteens to cook healthy lunches for students.

These, however, should not exonerate parents of their responsibility; many of them are known to spoil their children by meeting their demands for sugary drinks, cookies and snacks.

Thanks to public promotion campaigns in recent years, more and more parents are pushing their children to go swimming, do bodybuilding and even hit running tracks.

In the coming years I expect to see people of our younger generation become taller and healthier.

The author is former deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily.

kangbing@chinadaily.com.cn