Big eyes, big noses, big breasts and now humungous Hummers – China seems to be indulging an obsession with size, just when the rest of the world is learning the virtues of moderation.

In Shanghai, for example, business is booming on eyelifts, noselifts, chestlifts and other surgery aimed at enlarging classically Asian narrow eyes, flat noses and unobtrusive mammary glands. At the Shanghai Time Plastic Surgery Hospital, Dr Liao Yuhua says business is up 40 per cent since the end of last year – not despite the global economic crisis, but because of it.