"Just turn on the TV or pick up a magazine and you're bombarded with information about food, weight loss, body sculpting, calories, supermodels, new clothes and so on. Everyone regards a slender figure as a symbol of fashion, elegance and attractiveness, and this cultural ethos has seriously affected the values of young people. So low weight is favored, and in certain groups, such as actors and models, the prevalence of eating disorders is higher than among the general population."

Dingxiang Doctor, an online platform that provides medical health content and health services, says about 3 percent of young people and adults in the world suffer from severe eating disorders, and the male to female ratio is 1:10.

"There are no official figures for China, and often here treatments cannot keep up with how quickly eating disorders are proliferating," Chen says ."It's often misdiagnosed and sometimes concealed because the patient feels it tarnishes their reputation."

In a country that uses "Have you eaten?" as a common greeting, experts are trying to understand this life-threatening disease to determine how an extended mental health system can ensure proper care.

The eating disorder support project of the clinical psychology department of Shanghai Mental Health Center, one of China's few programs dedicated to the treatment of eating disorders, gives us a glimpse of this disease that was almost unheard of 30 years ago, a complex byproduct of modernization and new media.