Great fun for big bonny girls.	Xiao Yang competing in a loveliest large lady contest.	And the winner is ....

The common misapprehension that “fat people are happy people” is strongly disputed, for one, by 25-year-old Ren Xin of Beijing, who is 1.65 meters tall and weighs 105 kilograms. “My weight is a constant source of stress and pain, as others judge me on the basis of it,” says Ren, sadly. Her weight problem, inherited from her father's side of the family, has made her the butt of jokes at school since the third grade, when she first began to balloon. She laughed with all those in her all-important peer group who laughed at her, but was actually cut to the quick at their jibes.

Ren's weight became even more of a problem when she entered the workforce. Despite her excellent massage skills, she has worked only a few months since graduating from a massage course four years ago. The job Ren found with a newly-opened massage parlor in desperate need of hands ended as soon as its business got on track. Ren was told that she was “damaging the company's image.” “Treatment like that makes me feel like some kind of eyesore that should be kept out of public sight,” laments Ren.

Being overweight is worse for those who have not always been so. Zhang Lili was regarded as a pretty girl before she made a dramatic weight gain at junior middle school. Unable to cope with the change this wrought on her life, Zhang chose to withdraw. Now manager of a publishing house, Zhang Lili still has problems coming to terms with her size: “Being overweight has changed my character. Everyone around me, my family in particular, is careful not to mention my size, because they know it makes me furious.” This is a common emotional phenomenon among overweight people. Their obviously excess girth makes them prone to irritability, depression and resentment towards others, which they attempt to assuage with gastric overindulgence that exacerbates the fundamental problem.

Fat Fellowship

Being without a regular job, Ren Xin spends most of her time playing billiards in the community center and practicing yangko or ballroom dancing with her elder neighbors. On one of these occasions, a man gave her a business card and suggested that she join his Fat Fellows Club. Ren initially hesitated, suspecting a con. She made a tentative visit two weeks later, when the club was holding a One Thousand Jin (one jin is half kilogram. The term 1,000 jin is a traditional reference to a girl) Team performance in the Beijing Botanical Garden. As their collective name implies, the four girls in the team weigh more than 1,000 jin in total, but nonetheless make a glamorous and charismatic performance spectacle.

The man who gave Ren Xin his business card turned out to be Yang Yi, the founder of the club. Yang runs a media company, whose income sustains the non-profit Fat Fellows Club. After observing the public discrimination that obese people around him suffered, Yang, who is of average weight, felt moved to do something to help. “Overweight people are more likely to encounter setbacks at school and in the workplace. They also have greater difficulty in finding jobs. I thought my club could offer them some help and comfort.”

The club now enjoys a national reputation. So far more than 3,000 people have registered on its website, 300 to 400 of them from Beijing. Yang has his eye on even bigger club activities, in the form of a nationwide “heavyweight” talent contest on the same lines as the hugely successful Super Girl -- the Chinese version of American Idol. Yang is also considering a Junoesque beauty pageant, judged by a panel of over-portly film stars and singers. These ideas are all with the basic aim of helping outsize people rebuild their self-confidence and be more readily accepted in society.

Yang also hopes that such activities will generate enough income for the club to allow it to carry on. He has already invested several million yuan in the club, and cannot ask members to pay subscriptions because most of them are jobless. Some have been offered roles in advertisements for weight-reducing products, but few have accepted.

Hope Springs Eternal

As the Fat Fellows Club is close to her home, Ren Xin goes regularly. She feels that her fellow members are the only people that can truly understand and comfort her. Since the club became known nationally, Ren Xin and her buddies have been invited to appear in several shows. The 25-year-old still has no boyfriend, but does not appear unduly concerned, and would not consider a mate with proportions as generous as her own for fear of doubling the chances of giving birth to a potentially obese offspring.

Ren has tried various diets to shed inches, none of which has worked for long. For a time her weight stood at an all-time high of 135 kilograms, and on that occasion her weight reduction attempts worked - she lost 20-odd kg over a few months - but at the monthly fee of RMB 5,000. When the regimen ended a month ago, Ren refrained from refamiliarizing herself with all her favorite foods, instead resolving to “get a job and resume social life.” She is currently making applications for work as a masseuse in the city. Opening a store and working for the Fat Fellows Club are also possible options.

Other club members have suggested to Ren that she try her luck in the entertainment sector, as she has a tuneful, resonant voice and a magnetic performance style. More important, not to mention surprising, Ren feels relaxed and inspired under the spotlight, and wept tears of delight and gratification after stepping down from her first public debut. It may be that show business is the perfect setting in which she can glory, and also profit from, her generous curves.