Zhao Liang needs two beds to rest his 2.46-metre (8ft, 1in) frame, one of life's Inconveniences for the Chinese giant who could become officially known as the world's tallest man.
The 27-year-old is 10 centimeters (four inches) taller than the current holder of the title, another Chinese man, but the media-wary Zhao has not yet decided whether he wants the Guiness Book of Records to officially ratify him.
Lying on a makeshift iron bed in a hospital in the northern city of Tianjin after an operation on his foot, Zhao seems almost bored with his sudden rise to fame.
The hospital was forced to put together two standard-sized iron beds to accommodate the giant from central Henan province whose parents are of average height, but he still has trouble fitting his large frame onto the narrow mattresses.
His shoulders, hands, legs and feet are all massive, and he finds it difficult to find clothes and shoes to fit.
He is huge even compared with China's most famous tall man, Yao Ming, the basketball star who plays for the Houston Rockets in the American NBA and stands 2.29 metres tall.
Asked about Zhao's clothes, Wang Keyun, his 1.68-metre-high mother, laughs and unravels a pair of his trousers -- they reach up to her face when she stands up.
‘For my son, everything is always custom-made, and when he was young I would make his clothes myself,’ she said.
Zhao has also been forced to confront more serious inconveniences, which he describes with few words.
‘When I was young, I stayed at home because of my height, and I did not play with others as they were small and I was tall,’ he said.
Zhao, whose parents are farmers, left school when he was 14, and worked in construction and as a laborer. But an artistic troupe noticed him in 2006 and employed him as a musician, playing the hulusi, a traditional Chinese wind instrument.
Things changed better and he now has friends, he said, although he has yet to find someone to marry him a fact that concerns his mother.
‘I am really worried about that,’ she said
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