Shadowing Practice: China's Disturbing "Frozen Face" Girl - Learn English Speaking with Video

When you were a child, you were probably going outside playing with your friends or doing your homework, and the only thing you had to worry about is if your crush liked you back.

They probably didn't.

But imagine if there was one kid in your class who would spend all her time outside of school getting plastic surgery.

Today, I want to tell you a jaw-dropping story of a girl who changed her entire face during childhood.

A 13-year-old girl who was bullied in school and thought the only way to overcome this was to get plastic surgery.

And when she did, people started treating her better.

So she continued to get more and more.

From her face to her head, you name it, she's done it.

And all of this eventually led to her suffering from memory loss.

Meet Zhou Chuna, aka Zoe, the youngest person in China to ever get plastic surgery.

Now Zoe was born into a wealthy family in Shanghai, meaning money wasn't something she had to think about.

No stress about paying the bills or feeding the family, so logically you'd think that her childhood would be pretty smooth.

But when she was around 13, her parents sent her to a top international school, and that's where the canon event begins.

Imagine walking into a school where everyone is stylish, trendy, and everyone is probably a mini influencer.

And taking a look at Zoe on the other hand, she had single eyelids, a flatter nose, and darker skin compared to her classmates.

Now, none of these are problems, okay?

But her classmates, they started calling her names, Things like dark skin girl squinty eyed girl The boys in her class would literally give her the worst

and dirtiest tasks during cleanup Pretty much they're treating her like she's at the bottom of their social hierarchy

And because of

that this is the moment where she begins to feel Maybe the problem is my face

So she goes home and tells her parents what's happening

And this is the part where the parents should step in

and say Those kids are wrong you're fine you don't need to change

But nah her mom looked at her and said It's one thing that your grades are bad in school

But you also don't look good either compared to your classmates.

So what good are you anyway?

Now That's not just asian parenting.

You're just bullying your child.

So now in her mind, it's not people are being mean It's they're right

So since then she starts fantasizing about waking up one day

with a completely new face a new identity A whole new life having fair skin and perfect features,

but she wasn't just thinking about it she was planning it.

So at 13, she asked her parents for plastic surgery and they say no, which finally a normal response,

but Zoe is too deep in it at this point.

She threatened to quit school if they didn't let her get surgery.

If you don't let me do this, I'm going to drop out.

And when that doesn't work, she goes full McLovin mode and borrows IDs from adults to try to get procedures done.

Her father obviously tries to stop her saying that she's too young and, you know, you should wait until you're 18.

So she threatens to cut off their father-daughter relationship.

And at that point, the pressure really got to them.

Her parents fold and her mom's like, which part do you want to get done?

I'll take you to the hospital.

Enter the first surgery, the moment she says goodbye to herself.

At 13 years old, Zoe undergoes her first procedure, the double eyelid surgery.

Her eyes now look bigger, more defined, and more in line of what she calls beautiful in her environment.

So she goes back to school and suddenly the boys who were bullying her, that they're nice and friendly now.

Y'all really some fake bitch.

So now she sees the direct proof that people treat you better when you look better.

And the mindset inevitably switches to if one surgery did this what happens

if i do more so what's the next move at this point she's around 14 years old

and she looks at her nose and goes yeah this doesn't match my new eyes

and just like that rhinoplasty no hesitation

and over the next two years she got eight surgeries on her eyes and six surgeries on her nose.

Okay.

Eight times on your eyes.

And it shows.

Zoe, it's not looking too good.

What's really disturbing about this is that she starts looking older

and older the more procedures she gets because if you look at these photos, she doesn't even look like she's in her teens anymore.

If anyone still thinks I looked good as a child, they might be blind.

I suggest they get their eyes checked.

So Zoe's second home is basically the cosmetic clinic now

and she even says that she's more familiar with that than her own house.

And I'm not even exaggerating when I'm saying this started to become her entire routine because every day after school, her full-time job was to just modify her face to her liking.

She started injecting hyaluronic acid to raise her nose bridge and Botox to slim down her face.

And then she leveled up into the high-risk procedures like cheekbone shaving

and the high cranial top surgery to put fillings in your head.

And keep in mind, she's still growing.

Her bones aren't even fully developed yet, and she's already like, yeah, let's shave some of that off.

And here's a sneak peek of like a whole list of procedures that she's had so far.

Now, one of the bigger procedures involved her going into a 10-hour full-face plastic surgery room.

And during this surgery, they used so much anesthesia to the point where after it was done, her mom couldn't even wake her up.

She had no response, no reaction, and she only opened her eyes eight hours after.

Of course, her mom was terrified, but Zoe didn't care.

The first thing she did when she woke up was grab a mirror to see if she looked prettier, and apparently her face wasn't enough.

So she expanded to doing liposuction, chest augmentation, rib removals, all while she's still a teenager.

What should I do, babies?

I've messed up again.

Because I overdid it, one side of my face is now twitching.

I can only move half of my face to talk.

My face is crooked, my nose is crooked, and my implants are misaligned.

I am a paralyzed child.

So at this point, she's 16 years old.

And in these past two years, she had overgone 380 surgeries.

She even had over 20 cantoplasties, which are eye corner surgeries to make your eyes bigger.

I mean, it looks like her eyes can see into the future.

And when people asked her if she regrets anything, she said, the only thing I regret is not starting sooner.

Honestly, I'm starting to like her more and more.

And because she was from a wealthy family, she had the funds to just keep on going.

And at 16 years old, she spent around 3 to 4 million yuan on cosmic surgeries.

That is around 400 to $600,000.

Instead of buying a house, going to college, investing, doing literally anything else, She puts all of it into changing her face and body Oh

and her pink Ferrari that she flexes in every post

and almost hits a cop once and she expressed her entire belief system

Beautiful people have youth while ugly people are just growing up Basically, she saw beauty as the only way to experience life fully

So every time she changed something she would take selfies post it online get likes, get attention, and feel validated.

And rinse and repeat.

The cycle never ends.

At only 16 years old, I possess beauty and a figure that many people don't even have at 26.

100

I'm so tired.

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She even joined online groups with other girls who were also obsessed with plastic surgery.

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They called themselves plastic surgery sisters and they treated it like it was a competition.

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Like, okay, what upgrade are you getting next?

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I'll be upgrading my job.

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And slowly but surely, Zoe was pushing her body to its limits.

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I mean, after 380 procedures, I'm sure your body is telling you to slow it down.

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You know, maybe just a bit, Zoe.

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Okay, well, it starts fighting back because one of the major side effects that she first got was memory loss, which is horrifying.

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This was because her brain was affected by the constant anesthesia after every procedure.

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And her skin also started sagging all over her body due to the excessive liposuction she had to shrink her waist down.

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So instead of body goals, it's creating a whole set of new problems.

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And what do people usually do when a surgery creates a flaw?

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You get more surgery.

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She thought her face was too square, like Steve.

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So she got jaw shaving surgery.

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And because of that, her facial nerves were damaged, meaning that she couldn't make any facial expressions at all.

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Her face was stuck and frozen in place pretty much, and it somehow gets worse.

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Because of the repeated cantoplasties, those eye widening surgeries that she did over like 20 times,

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her eyes were stretched so much and so wide apart that she can't even fully close them when she sleeps.

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Yeah, sleeping with your eyes halfway opened.

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Was it worth it?

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At this point, doctors pretty much told her that the damage was irreversible.

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The scars, the nerve tissues, the entire structure of your face was permanent now.

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And of course, netizens do what netizens love to do.

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They started calling her plastic surgery monster.

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They joked that she looks 60 years old despite being a teenager.

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They are obviously Martians and they came up with this way to blend in with humans.

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Free admission to the haunted house.

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But here's where the story takes a turn because after this all blew up, Zoe steps on a stage on a show called Super Speaker Youthful Days.

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She gives a speech called the price of plastic surgery

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and for the first time ever she actually sounds self-aware She admits on TV

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that she had hundreds of procedures since she was 13 She spent over 4 million yuan

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and she redid her eyes eight times

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and her nose six times more shockingly She confessed

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that she was happier with her original face than the one after surgery saying

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that she tried to fix it But it was too late

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I noticed that my eyes were in the air and it was a little bit of blood.

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I was scared.

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I was just able to see my eyes when I was still awake.

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I was just a little bit concerned about my doctor's face.

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I was just a little bit concerned about my doctor's face.

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I said, no matter what, you're just a big eye.

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He was just a big eye.

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I was able to fix these things.

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I walked to the北京, the Shanghai, the whole community.

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The doctor gave me the opinion and feedback And during all of this,

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it does seem like she's trying to raise awareness for people just like her.

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She told others to not blindly follow the same path and to appreciate their features, and to understand that the price of beauty is irreversible.

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That is the most self-aware thing that she said in this entire journey.

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Cherish your body.

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I'm still so young and my memory has declined because I had over 80 general anesthesias in two years.

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She even ends it off with, instead of getting plastic surgery, I should have gotten my brain fixed.

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And people watching were stunned.

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I mean, some genuinely felt bad for her, some were even crying, and others saw her as a warning sign of what social pressure

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and beauty standards can do to young people.

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And this clip went viral after that.

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Everybody loved it.

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Everybody was cheering for Zoe, and you know, she finally learned her lesson.

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I'm proud.

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But shortly after the show, she makes a post saying, I'm going to get plastic surgery again.

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Sorry.

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What?

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After everything we just went through, Zoe, why are we giving mixed signals.

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Although I tell everyone online every day to say goodbye to appearance anxiety, I myself am genuinely anxious about my appearance every single day.

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Go, go, go.

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I want to become the most beautiful girl in the world.

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So now netizens are like, wait, were you serious on stage or were you just doing it for attention?

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So now they start calling her a fake fraud.

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You use the sad story to gain sympathy then immediately contradicted it and gets worse because after this,

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people found out that she had fan groups where teenagers would ask her about procedures

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and she would guide them like a mentor to help them schedule it.

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Like as if she's tutoring them on which surgeries to get.

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But then people started blaming her mom for this because from the beginning, her mom was the one supporting it.

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Every year when Zoe returned home to their family reunion dinner, her grandfather would always see her with a completely different face.

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So he'd always try to persuade her mom to tell her to

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stop doing it or at least make it look more natural.

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And her dad is also like, you know, you're embarrassing us.

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Why are you doing this?

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And you know what she says?

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I just look too much like my dad.

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If my dad were more handsome, I wouldn't have gotten surgery.

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It's all my dad's fault.

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Okay.

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She's still like 16 or 17 here.

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So her brain's not fully developed yet, but that is one crazy thing to say to your Asian dad.

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If I said

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that I'd be banished to the underground concubines of the yang dynasty eventually the whole situation blows up even more

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because she kept posting transformation photos on xiao hong shu

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and douyin she starts getting brand deals tv shows start inviting her and slowly

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but surely being the youngest person in china to get plastic surgery starts becoming her entire brand it just shows

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that everything zoe had done so far was just to get attention

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and she sacrificed her face her entire teenage years for that

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if anything the money that was poured into her surgeries was an investment for her becoming an influencer.

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So where's Zoe now?

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Well, I mean recently she got invited to this fashion event where she's looking as fresh as ever.

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She's still active, still posting online, but most importantly, she does not plan to stop getting plastic surgery.

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And looking at Zoe's entire journey, if somebody stepped in earlier like her mom or maybe a close friend, the whole story could have have ended differently.

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But instead, it led to long-term side effects like memory loss, which, I mean, at such a young age, we don't even know how bad it can get later on in her life.

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And well, just like Zoe said before, you know, she started switching up on us, the price of beauty is irreversible.

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Anyways, stay unemployed.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: China's Disturbing "Frozen Face" Girl - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?