Skinny, by any means necessary

Joey Lin remembers well the first time she visited Long Spring Hospital (長春診所), the popular weight loss clinic in Neihu, Taipei City.

Told to come early, she arrived at the clinic at about 6am, and got into the line that was already long and growing rapidly. A chartered bus, carrying dozens of patients from Kaohsiung and other areas of southern Taiwan had arrived long before, the passengers already milling about outside in the early morning light.

"Hey Miss, line up at the back. Don't cut in!" some of the ladies said.

The clinic wouldn't open for another three and a half hours. This line was just for patients to get a number for registration later at the hospital.

Lin would later realize that it's common to wait in line at the clinic for four to five hours along with the more than 100 people who typically jam the 30m2 clinic at all times of the day.

Handling the non-stop flow of patients are Dr Liu Bo-en (劉伯恩) and two nurses.

"When it gets busy, the nurses don't have time to take your registration. You don't know where to get the medicine after seeing the doctor. And the phone keeps ringing without anyone answering. People start talking really loudly out of boredom and long waiting. It gets really messy," Lin said.

Welcome to the crazy world of weight-reduction in Taiwan, where many women view Liu as nothing less than a miracle worker.

Having wised up after several visits, Lin learned to get to the clinic in the morning, take her registration number and then go to work. When she returned after work in the evening, her number would be about up. A visit would involve a basic health checkup and then a two-minute consultation with the doctor. Then, because there are so many patients, she would have to return the next day to pick up the medicine she originally came to get.

"Every time I go, there are always fights between patients over who was first, or why some can't get the medicine early ? things like that. Some people even pay delivery service couriers to stand in line for them, while others wave legislators' business cards as a way to cut in line."

"Were it not for the medicine being so effective, I would never want to queue up like this," Lin said. For one week's regimen, the medicine costs about NT$1,500, and in the first week helped her shed 2kg. She gave up the treatment after two weeks, however, feeling put off by the madhouse at the clinic.

New Bodies

What the patients are raving about is Lin's weight-reduction treatment, called the Cocktail Obesity Treatment (雞尾酒減肥療法).

Originally a gynecologist and a surgeon, Liu switched his specialization to weight reduction treatment 18 years ago and by his own estimates, he has treated between 300,000 to 400,000 people.

The so-called cocktail treatment is a combination of medicine, diet-control and exercise, tailored to an individual's physique and condition. Its effectiveness lies in the unique combinations of

prescriptions. "I have more than 400 kinds of secret prescriptions, which I can use for many more variations," Liu said proudly.

He explains that obesity in Asian people is different from that of, say, Caucasians. "Although fat is a major reason behind obesity, obesity in Chinese people is more due to the starch-heavy diet from their staple food -- rice," Liu said.

According to him, this is why the weight-control pill Xenical, wildly popular in the West, has little market share in Taiwan.