A few days ago, a new study was published in The Lancet. The Chinese people have become taller and taller in the past thirty years.
In the 35 years from 1985 to 2019, the average height of a 19-year-old male in China has increased by 8cm, the largest increase in the world. The average height of 19-year-old women in China has also increased by 6cm, the third largest increase in the world.
In this study, 19-year-old Chinese men and women, with an average height of 175.7cm and 163.5cm, surpassed South Korea and topped East Asia.
Of course, the data of the “Lancet” research is a bit counter-intuitive because of the large increase in data. I have read several related materials, and there are still many disputes about the reliability of this data.
But even if there are discrepancies in the data, one thing is certain is that the Chinese are indeed getting taller.
And this change has been very obvious in 30 years. Our generation is significantly taller than our parents, but we are still shocked when we see the post-95s and post-00s. When I walk around in middle school, I have to say a few words about what children eat now.
So many experts believe that the rule of not having to buy a ticket below 1.2m does not apply.
So let’s talk about this issue, how do Chinese grow taller?
01
Let’s start with the conclusion. In my opinion, it is not so much that Chinese people grow taller, it is better to restore height.
To explain this question, we must first make it clear, were the Chinese really short in the past?
In traditional concepts, the yellow race should be shorter than whites and blacks, especially East Asians, giving the impression that they are thin and not tall. And what’s interesting is that, regardless of Chinese and foreign things, everyone agrees with the concept of “yellow people short.”
But in my opinion, the problem with this concept is that it is too crude to simply classify the three races. Whether it is Europe or Africa, it is a multi-ethnic region, and the height differences among the various ethnic groups are scary. Even if it is the same race, as long as the distribution location is different, there will be differences in height.
Let’s first look at a set of data compiled by netizens from Baidu’s “Human Height”, which is more illustrative.
In 1900, The shortest group of Chinese men is Cantonese, with an average of 160.8 cm, which belongs to the shortest group in the world. The highest group comes from Zhili Province, that is, the Hebei area of Beijing, which can reach 168.9 cm. It is at least middle and upper in the world, even more than a large part of the residents of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
By the way, until today, Beijing is the provincial administrative district with the highest average height in China.
Look at some perceptual evidence again. During the First World War, China sent a large number of laborers to support the Allied Powers, among which Shandong were the main ones. Looking at the photos, our Shandong Dahan is obviously much taller than the British and French officers. “A tall belt around the Bohai Sea” is always a god.
Whether it is the data or the comparison of photos, it can be seen that in the pre-industrial era more than a hundred years ago, when everyone was almost poor, the height of the Chinese was relatively not short.
It can be concluded that, at least genetically, the height of Chinese people is not significantly behind that of foreigners.
02
So, why in the impression of Westerners, East Asians and Chinese are generally short?
I think this may be a stereotype of Europeans and Americans, and such a stereotype is influenced by historical factors.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the vigorous westward movement of the United States came to an end.
In 1848, gold was discovered in California, USA, which triggered the global gold rush. Adventurers and speculators from all over the world came to California to search for gold.
In 1862, US President Lincoln introduced the “Pacific Railroad Act”, hoping to build a Pacific Railroad across the east and west of the United States.
At this time, a question appeared before the capitalists on the West Coast of the United States: Where does the labor come from?
The northern government led by Lincoln opposed slavery, so black laborers are definitely not worthwhile. As a labor force, white laborers are too hard-working to withstand the arduous construction environment on the snow-capped Nevada mountains. Moreover, the West Bank itself is far from Europe. Importing labor from Europe is really a loss of business.