New shoes for the world's tallest woman By Eva Gerten

Deutsche Presse Agentur
Published: Monday September 4, 2006

By Eva Gerten, Vreden, Germany- It's not easy for the world's tallest woman to find a pair of shoes that fit. After all, she takes size 57. Yao Defen, who is 2.36 metres tall and couldn't find any suitable footwear in her native China, had to turn to a German cobbler for help.

Georg Wessels has been making shoes for people with outsized feet for a quarter of a century.

When he left for Beijing recently, there was almost no room left in his suitcase after packing it with two pairs of shoes and a pair of sandals for his Chinese customer.

"I know she likes dark red and made the shoes in the colour of ox blood for her," said the 54-year-old before embarking on the long journey that was to take him to Anhui province in eastern China.

Yao, 34, is unable to travel. She has been squeezing her huge feet into a pair of black men's shoes because nothing else was available.

The Chinese woman is one of the 10 tallest people in the world. Wessels has been visiting her regularly over the years, paying his own expenses and making her shoes for free.

"Most people who suffer from gigantism have serious health problems and can hardly move, let alone jet around the world," says Wessels.

Yao, who grew up in a poor farming community, was sold by her parents to a circus when she was 13 and already measured 1.85 metres, an enormous height for a Chinese.

People paid to money to see see her in a freak show, but she was able escape when she was older and now lives in a ground floor flat in her native village.

Yao suffers from a large tumour in the pituitary gland of her brain, which has stimulated her body to release excessive amounts of growth hormone, according to Wessels.

"I want to help so that she can undergo surgery to rid her of the tumour," says the German, who lives in Vreden in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Well-heeled people from all over the world visit him to be measured and fitted for comfortable, sturdy and fashionable shoes they would have difficulty finding elsewhere.

Wessels' range begins with sizes that ordinary shoe shops do not stock - 43 for women and 47 for men.

The shoemaker also takes a personal interest in his clients, many of whom, like Yao, have had a tough upbringing.

"I've experienced it with my own eyes how they are laughed at and live very lonely lives, often in isolation. Hardly anyone takes them seriously or treats them as normal human beings. On the contrary, they are viewed as dangerous monsters like those see in fairly tales," he says.

Wessels has been friends for a long time with Russian Alexander Sizonenko, at the 2.48 metres the world's tallest man and a former basketball star.

Wessels says he pays annual visits to "Big Alex" at his small St Petersburg apartment, where he can barely stand up straight and has to duck every time he goes through the door.

The biggest pair of shoes Wessels ever made was size 69 for the late Matthew MacGrory of the United States, a man the German also called a friend.

Wessels and his brother Peter, a master cobbler, operate their business themselves. Peter says he needs to have precise foot measurements before starting to make his shoes.

The brothers obtained Yao's latest measurements from the Shanghai hospital where she is undergoing treatment. Georg Wessels will measure them again to make sure during his 10-day trip to China.

© 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agenteur