A healthy attitude towards health check (6)

There are even people who go abroad for professional medical checkups.

Huang Minjin, 40, chief accountant with the Zhuhai branch of Panasonic Energy, is another believer who has noted changing attitudes.

"When I started annual medical checkups in 2004, few others around me did the same,” Huang recalls.

"People went to hospitals for physical examination only when they felt ill. Now everyone attaches great importance to regular checkups.”

Wu Jiang, 32, has paid for his parents-in-law to go for physical examinations every year since they arrived in Beijing six years ago, at the cost of 500 yuan ($80) each time.

"It is a necessary expenditure,” Wu says, adding that his 63-year-old mother-in-law was found to have mild hypertension during the checkup in 2011.