Asia, East

In East Asia, there has long been a tradition of obesity among many wealthy officials, even in ancient China. The mythical emperor Shennong (Shen Nung), often known as the Yan Emperor, and who is claimed to have lived in about 3,000 bce, is said to have asked his people to drink green tea to reduce obesity levels. An Lushan (703–757), the military leader of Turkic-Sogdian origin during the Tang dynasty suffered from obesity which led to diabetes; and Kublai Khan (reigned as Emperor of China 1271–94), was also plagued by obesity and gout during the last 10 years of his reign. This has been attributed to his eating many animal organs. The most well-known overweight emperor was the Wanli Emperor (reigned 1572–1620) near the end of the Ming dynasty. He was ruling when the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci visited Beijing, and his reign is seen as representing the decline of the Ming, the grossness of his figure being used by historians to emphasize this.

The Emperor himself had become so large that he apparently was unable to stand without assistance. Some books also credit Yang Guifei (719–756), one of [Page 50]the “Four Beauties of ancient China” as being obese. However, recent historical research points to the misconception coming from a comparison with the slender Zhao Faiyan (c.32–1 b.c.e.), the wife of Emperor Cheng of Han, possibly suggesting that Yang Guifei was either of normal build or slightly overweight.

The first European artists to visit China often caricatured Chinese officials for being fat, with some of the cartoons associated with the Macartney mission to China in 1793–94 showing clearly obese officials—obesity being used to try to represent slothfulness and corruption. This tradition of caricature continued with Commissioner Lin (Lin Zexu) (1785–1850), the main official who fought opium smuggling, leading to the First Opium War of 1839–42, also being portrayed as obese, with more sympathetic paintings showing him as only a little overweight. The cultural stereotypes continued onto the 20th century, with novelist Ernest Bramah referring to the Chinese gods being old and obese. The New Zealand-born writer Rewi Alley (1897–1987), who lived in China and became a member of the Chinese Communist Party, suffered from obesity during his last years

The main problem facing China in the 21st century has been the massive rise in childhood obesity. One of the main factors of child obesity in China has been that the one-child policy has led to many parents spoiling their children, devoting more money to providing food, often Western-style foods, for them. This has largely come about through overeating, eating fatty food, insufficient exercise, and a sedentary lifestyle, all stemming from a rise in prosperity. A study in 2007 by B. Xie et al. showed that of the 6,863 middle school and high school students measured, 10 percent of the girls and 17 percent of the boys were overweight. The study showed that the higher the level of parental education and the higher the level of family income, the greater the prevalence of the children being either overweight or obese. In another study by H. W. Marsh et al., also carried out in 2007, some 763 Chinese children aged 8–15 also showed high levels of overweight.

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