Looking for the main idea of a passage

EXERCISE 3Focusing on general information

INSTRUCTIONSRead the text and answer multiple-choice questions about the main ideas expressed in each paragraph.

Stretch my legs, Doc!

§1. Swee Jing paid more money that most Chinese people earn in a year to have both her legs broken and stretched. The pretty college graduate is now lying in a hospital bed, clearly still in pain, after the doctors sawed through the flesh and bone of both legs in eight places. Once the broken bones start to heal the doctors will begin to turn the screws on the cage pushing the steel rods apart and so stretching the leg. It is a slow and painful process that will take 18 months to add 8cm to Swee Jing's height.

§2. In part, the popularity of such surgery can be explained by the surge of interest in fashion and beauty in a country where things like fashion magazines and beauty contests used to be banned. The once closed society is now more open to western influences and the relatively prosperous middle classes have the money to explore cosmetic possibilities. Shops and magazines in the cities show endless images of long-legged western models, inevitably putting pressure on young women.

§3. However, even successful operations can bring pain several months after the initial operation. "During the final weeks of the stretching, I was in so much discomfort that I couldn't sleep at night," says one young woman from Beijing who gave her name as Susan. The 27-year-old is in hospital recovering from an operation to remove the steel rods that have been inside her legs for the past 18 months. Each leg now bears eight circular scars, each half an inch in diameter.


From http://fullspate.digitalcounterrevolution.co.uk/archive/chinalegs.html