A woman said to be the tallest in the world has been fitted with new size-57 shoes from a German cobbler who travelled to China to meet her.
”If I’d known how poorly she was, I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to go there,” 54-year-old Georg Wessels said on Monday on his return from Anhui province where he met the 2,36m-tall Yao Defen.
Yao’s health was so bad she could barely stand up and had to lie down when trying on the three pairs of bordeaux coloured shoes and sandals he had brought for her, Wessels said in Beijing.
Yao (34) suffers from a brain tumour, which has stimulated her body to release excessive amounts of growth hormone, causing her exceptional height.
The disease, known as gigantism, is threatening to take a potentially lethal turn and Yao is expected to undergo surgery in October, Wessels was told by her doctors.
Wessels has been making shoes for people with outsized feet for a quarter of a century, and counts the world’s 10 tallest people among his clients.
He travelled to China at his own expense and gave Yao the shoes as a gift, after obtaining her foot measurements from her doctors.
”The measurements were not entirely accurate,” he said. ”The sandals fit best of all.” The two pairs of laced shoes were big enough, but a little tight at the sides, he added.
Yao, who grew up in a poor farming community, was sold by her parents to a circus when she was 13 but later left and returned to her native village of Hefei where she now lives.
Wessels, who has a workshop with his brother Peter in the German town of Vreden, makes shoes starting from size 43 for women and 47 for men. — Sapa-dpa