Thanks!
And good question. I had pondered a while over the size of this man. I ended up choosing 175cm for two reasons:
1. It's a common size for a person in most of the English speaking world, which is the target audience for the infographic. Otherwise one can think: The
changren dadao isn't that big, it's depicted next to a small Chinese man!
2. Second, the common perception on the size of Chinese is not necessarily correct. The Chinese that travelled the most and settled all over the world are predominantly from the south, where people indeed tend to be on the short side. This gave most people in western countries the impression that all Chinese were and are short. We have this difference in Europe, too: Nordic people tend to be really tall, people around the Mediterranean tend to be short.
Northern Chinese can be huge, 7 ft 6 inch basketballer Yao Ming is an extreme example. I'm just under 5 ft 6 and when I was living in Beijing, most guys were taller than me. People in Beijing are about as tall on average as people in the United States.
I haven't found sources on the actual size of people in Beijing by the time this text was written, though. Looking at the bows and arrows they used, and extant clothing, I tend to think they averaged around 170 cm and 175 cm. The emperor, a Manchu from further north, was quite tall. He was probably closer to 180 cm or 190 cm.
Peter