James Kynge

I was really quite amazed.

It's the story of this Australian woman, 28 years old, Chinese-Australian.

Apparently, her mother recommended that she went to one of these fat prisons in China, in Guangzhou City in southern China.

I think her real name is T.L.

Huang.

And she was in one of these fat prisons in December last year.

And I have to say...

I didn't quite know how to react to it.

I mean, I can see that people really want to take drastic steps to lose weight, but it did look sort of brutal.

And there were moments when she's talking to the video camera

when she looks like she's about to cry and she's really having a hard time.

As you mentioned, Alice, you book yourself into these facilities.

They're called fat prisons in the vernacular.

The real name for them is weight loss training camps.

And apparently there are more than a thousand of these all over China at the moment.

And although you book yourself in voluntarily,

They do lock the gates.

They've got strict rules.

There's constant supervision.

And you're not allowed to leave freely unless you have a good excuse.