Review of cosmetic surgery in China

This is my first time writing a review, so the post may feel a bit scattered! The reason I’m writing it is that on Instagram I kept seeing before-and-after photos of surgeries in China, which is what tempted me in the first place, and procedures that supposedly don’t exist in Korea were showing up a lot, maybe because of the algorithm. There are almost no reviews that Korean people can use as reference. I figured someone would be looking into it like I did, so I decided from the start that I should write a review. For me, it was a long journey of researching information, deciding, contacting places, and so on, so I’m going to write it all out in detail...! First, my concerns were: eyes that look cramped because the horizontal length is short and the line is blurry (lateral canthoplasty 6 years ago), and a nose that is long with a drooping tip, making me look like Squidward as time passed (autologous costal cartilage surgery 4 years ago). After surgery, my eyes still did not become clearly wider, so the problem of narrow eyes and a cramped impression was not really solved, and my nose also seemed to gradually have the tip shape droop downward over time. To talk about the eyes first, in hospitals in my country, the only recommendation for short horizontal eyes was lateral canthoplasty, and even at famous places other than the hospital where I had surgery, they said there was no more space to open the outer and lower corners... So I thought maybe adding aegyo-sal could make the eyes look more three-dimensional horizontally, and I looked into that too. But eyelid-bag filler seemed like it would make me look like a caterpillar, and I also looked into tattooing, but after reading reviews about ink bleeding, I gave up right away. In my country, fat grafting for aegyo-sal is also possible, and there are procedures using filler, like a wide-eye filler, that can create the illusion of longer eyes, but I disliked the odd transparency that seems to come with them, and somehow fillers just felt awkward and off-putting from the start. Also, the price was high and they were not permanent. For fat placed into aegyo-sal, they said the survival rate is a gamble, absorption rates differ by person, and they could not guarantee the thickness I wanted. I thought there was no solution and had just given up, but then I found out that in Chinese cosmetic surgery there are procedures that extend the double-eyelid line longer, which was what I wanted, and that there are also permanent aegyo-sal procedures, so from then on I started traveling around for consultations.. haha. What was interesting was that there were options viewed from a different perspective than in Korea, and after about a year and a half of thinking, researching more information, I learned that in that country people commonly do the same kind of surgery to lengthen the aegyo-sal line and the double-eyelid line to make the eyes look long and clear, just like getting double-eyelid surgery. Korea and China are only about 2 hours apart, yet the cosmetic surgery methods are this different, which was surprising as I looked into it. The fact that there was a surgery method that could improve exactly the point I wanted to fix, and fix the part that had been bothering me, made me dig into it like crazy. haha. In the end, after deciding on the hospital I researched, I went ahead with incisional double-eyelid surgery + eye correction + autologous dermis grafting for aegyo-sal. haha + Chinese cosmetic surgery itself has a lot of content on Reels and Xiaohongshu, but it’s hard for Koreans to find information, and people say it can be a money drain, so I kept worrying. And when you look at Chinese cosmetic surgery, there are a lot of bizarre videos and obvious Photoshop;; In central areas of Chinese cities, just like Gangnam and Apgujeong in Korea, there are many good hospitals, but if you go a little out toward the outskirts, there are plenty of places that operate like factories, and you can’t even trace the source, and there are also many hospitals on WeChat whose replies feel strange and suspicious. (Even on Baidu Maps there were cases where they kept saying a hospital existed even though it wasn’t shown there;;) I even looked for Thailand-China agencies to find information about Chinese cosmetic surgery (not just hospitals, but good hospitals). Since in Thailand the culture had already shifted a lot from Korean cosmetic surgery trips to China, there were many reviews from Thai people who had surgery in China. At some point the number of Thai reviews suddenly exploded, so even Reels were useful as references. It was a place I chose after a year and a half of running around, consulting, and researching (even I think I’m a pretty persistent type), so I didn’t really have worries about safety or results with the place I chose. After a long time of research and careful thought, I made the decision, and since I’m writing this review as an advance scout, I hope it helps people who are interested in Chinese cosmetic surgery or have concerns like mine! + For those who are curious about how I looked around for options, it’s really a long story, but first I looked more at Thai reviews than at information from Chinese apps like Xiaohongshu or Douyin. Thai people seem to have a culture of posting cosmetic surgery info almost like a brag. After asking various questions there in person, I learned that unlike Korea, China doesn’t have an in-house consultation manager stationed at the hospital (like in Wangjing), and instead the system works by having famous people or agencies hired to promote and manage customers. There were lots of fake accounts too (really, really many), and there were cases where they would say it was hospital X, but then try to take you to another hospital, or suddenly claim the doctor you chose wasn’t available... In the first place, finding a real hospital was almost a joke, but even finding a real hospital was hard, and finding a good hospital and doctor was really difficult. Still, I researched obsessively and went through with the surgery, and I liked the result, so this time I really felt the power of thorough research. Other people’s reviews are often brief, but for me the whole process was so hard that the post got long as I wrote it. If I write about the nose surgery too, it’ll be way too long, so if the reaction is good, I’ll bring a review of the nose surgery I had at the same time as the eye surgery :) Thank you for reading my long journey haha haha haha haha