Early Life
Yao Defen was born to poor farmers in the town of Liuan in the Anhui province of Shucheng County. At birth she weighed 2.8 kilograms (6.2 lb). At the age of three years she was eating more than three times the amount of food that other three-year-old children were eating. When she was eleven years old she was about six feet, two inches tall. She was six feet nine inches tall by the age of fifteen years.
The story of this "woman giant" began to spread rapidly after she went to see a doctor at the age of fifteen years for an illness. Medical doctors (who also saw her after years) properly diagnosed the illness but decided not to cure her, because her family did not have the 4000 yuan for the surgery. After that, many companies attempted to train her to be a sports star. The plans were abandoned, however, because Yao was too weak. Because she was illiterate, since 1992 Defen earned a living by traveling with her father and performing.
Yao's giant stature was caused by a large tumor in the pituitary gland of her brain, which was releasing too much growth hormone and caused excessive growth in her bones. Around 2002 a hospital in Guangzhou Province removed the tumor and she stopped growing.
The tumor returned and she was treated in Shanghai in 2007, but was sent home for six months with the hope that medication would reduce her tumor enough to allow surgery. The second surgery was never performed due to lack of funds.
In 2009, the TLC cable TV network devoted a whole night's show to her. She suffered from a fall in her home and had internal bleeding of the brain. She recovered and felt some happiness after a visit from China's tallest man, Zhang Juncai.
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