SHANGHAI, Aug. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Lying in bed recovering from an ear operation at a Shanghai Hospital, the 26-year-old rock and roll singer Yu Zhenhuan, the world's hairiest man, beamed at fans around his bedside.

    "It's no big deal. I can handle it," he said.

    To repair his declining hearing, doctors spent five hours Friday reshaping his malformed ears and removing hair from his external auditory canals, which were congenitally narrower than normal.

    Hair about one to two centimeters long jammed his auditory canals and prevented his ears from normal secretion. Before the operation, Yu suffered from constant earaches, nausea and headache and lost a third of his hearing.

    Doctors, who call Yu's the condition "atavism," said he had anaverage of 41 hairs on every square centimeter of his skin. The average length of his hair is 4.2 centimeters.

    "I will continue to sing. Singing brings me closer to the world and cheers me up," he said.

    Born on Sept. 30, 1997 in a remote village of northeast China's Liaoning Province, the newborn was covered with hair everywhere except his palms and the soles of his feet and had a big nose, thick lips and stumpy teeth.

    About five foot eight, Yu tightly held his girlfriend's hand while receiving a transfusion. While he was in school, however, no girls would approach him because he looked so strange.

    Beneath an exterior even his friends called "freakish," Yu hada heart and mind as sensitive as any other kids of his age.

    Yu felt shamed to go out in the public, let alone to talk. Fora long time, Yu constantly asked himself why he looked so different while the rest of his family, including his elder sisterand parents, looked perfectly normal.

    At the age of 17, hair follicles on his nose became infected. Later, his gums suffered from hyperplasia. So far, he has had fivesurgeries.

    As a child, Yu was never keen on schoolwork, but was highly talented in the performing arts. He starred in a movie at the age of six about a hairy child's adventure, and he became a rock and roll singer as a teenage, perforing in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Zhuhai,Shanghai, Guangzhou and Malaysia. In 2002, he was recognized as the hairiest man in the world by the Guinness Book of Records.

    "I've never lacked attention all my life, which is good and bad. If I have a son, I hope he is another hairy boy. I want him to live with pride," he said. Enditem