Editor's note: The following article, translated and edited from a Yangcheng Evening News article, follows a few reporters as they traverse the immensely popular Chinese beauty pageant circuit. Through their interviews with various pageant contestants, the reporters uncovered a world void of future career potential, run by chauvinists, and filled with bribery and perversion… which is to say, it's probably no different than beauty pageants throughout the rest of the world…  

Somewhere along the line, Guangdong Province became China's beauty pageant mecca. In the beginning, there was only the Guangzhou-based "Beauty in Flower City" (美在花城), but in the wake of its immense popularity, many more pageants soon followed, including the South New Silk Road (南方新丝路), Miss China (中华小姐), Miss China (中国小姐), Changlong Bikini Pageant (长隆比基尼大赛), Miss Pearl (珠江小姐) etc. Today, Guangdong alone is host to more than ten beauty pageants, and even though their format is basically identical, it seems that Chinese audiences can't get enough. Yet, some lurking questions, casting a negative light on beauty pageants in the Mainland, have begun to pop up in recent years as the excesses of all that pageantry have reached a saturation point. Why are there so many "familiar faces" in each event? What are the future job prospects for a girl with a beauty pageant title? Do contestants exchange money (or their bodies) to win? Is it really appropriate for tween-aged girlsto compete in these events?

Professional pageanteers

In 2010, amongst public criticism that she was a "serial contestant", 21-year-old Chongqing student Chen Lingyun (陈凌云) participated in her 40th competition in the last three years. Yet, while it may seem a bit ridiculous that such a young girl was already a seasoned pro, Chen Lingyun is by no means the only one making regular appearances in beauty pageants (this trend has given rise to the new nick-name "professional pageanteer" (选美专业户). For example, both the winner and runner-up from the last Changlong Bikini Pageant were regulars – the winner, Tan Xiaowen (谭晓雯) has been doing beauty pageants since she was only a child. It's likely that runner-up Wu Sixian (伍思贤), is also familiar looking – she had previously competed in Miss Asia (亚洲小姐), China Marine Beauty (中国海洋丽人) and Miss Hongcheng (红橙小姐), among others.

According to Chen Wanxuan (陈婉玹), the third place runner-up in the last Changlong Bikini Competition, many girls do, in fact, consider themselves to be working as professional pageanteers:  "I only took third place runner-up in this year's competition. My performance had a few weaknesses and my strong points were not well displayed. I'll continue competing in pageants until I win. No one ever wins a beauty pageant their first time. Every girl needs to work towards it, and I look at each pageant as a single step. There'll always be other girls that are more experienced than you, that's just the way it goes."

Future job opportunities?

Mainland China doesn't really have an outlet for beauty pageant winners to launch successful careers in the entertainment industry. Many beauty pageant winners quickly discover that after they've successfully jumped through all of the hoops of the beauty pageant, that there's another level of "hoop jumping" waiting for them, and that the odds of them "making it" are stacked against them. Currently, there's no Mainland equivalent of TVB's (Hong Kong television broadcasting) coverage of Miss Hong Kong, which makes it highly unlikely that the next Maggie Cheung or Michelle Reis will be discovered through a Mainland beauty pageant. Sadly, the best option for many contestants seems to be becoming the trophy wife of a rich man. As for those contestants that are uninterested in "early retirement" and are focused on breaking into the entertainment industry, the really lucky ones might become MV girls (in music video) or land a brief advertising contract, but the vast majority will be left behind, ultimately finding work at nightclubs and bars, using their previous competition experience to hopefully increase their salary.

Dong Dong (东东), the third place runner-up in the 18th Top Model of the World Pageant (世界顶尖模特大赛) had this to say: "Every year, so many beautiful girls compete, but most of them are unable to make a name for themselves in the beauty pageant circuit. Even the girls that win don't make it big over night. It's easy for the girls to get depressed and feel anxious. All we can do right now is try to have faith in ourselves. We tell ourselves, if we can't stand this minor difficulty, how are we ever going to achieve our bigger dreams?"

"Unwritten rules"

What's worse, the cycle that these girls are seemingly trapped in (that is, until they become too old), is plagued by chauvinism and cheating. During one episode of "Dragon Live" Programme on Dragon TV, a self-described professional pageanteer gave a less-than-alluring account of the "unwritten rules" of the auditioning and voting process for beauty pageants: Often, girls must succumb to nude auditions to even be considered for the beauty pageant; and it's not uncommon that the winner of the pageant either paid off the owner or became his mistress.

Zhu Xiaotong (朱晓彤), the winner of the Miss World China pageant, has also gone on record about the shady dealings that go on behind the scenes of beauty pageants, noting that she'd been openly propositioned by the owner of a pageant to have a "meeting" with him in his hotel room. Pan Linfeng (潘林风), a top-ten finalist in the World Bikini International pageant also revealed that pageant winners often "buy their title" – she claimed that in her first beauty pageant, even though she had the highest score, another contestant who'd paid 200,000 RMB ended up winning. And just in case you think that these are fabrications made up by bitter washed-up pageanteers, Wu Gang (吴刚
), the current president of the World Bikini International pageant, recently divulged that when he first became president of the pageant, he discovered that the "owners" were all just wealthy businessmen who'd come down to work at the competition to make some extra money off the "winner bribes" and find themselves a few mistresses.

…She's how old?!

On the surface, the recent Southwest Division Finals for the 19th Supermodel of the World pageant (世界超级模特大赛) was no different from any other pageant – beautiful contestants got together, gave some ditzy interviews and, most importantly "modelled about" in sexy dresses and skimpy swimsuits… which makes it very disturbing to learn that the winner of that event, who later moved on to the world finals, was none other than 14-year-old Zou Lin (邹林) from Chengdu. Not much later on, as if to prove that it hadn't been a strange fluke, 15-year-old Chen Zhener (陈臻儿) won the Henan Division Finals of the Miss China pageant. It seems that the age-limit for beauty pageants is becoming increasing lower – what was once "20 and up" gradually became "18 and up", which then shifted down to "16 and up". These days, it seems that there is no lower age-limit for beauty pageant contestants! One final telling fact: of all the winner contestants that the reporters interviewed, none of them were older than than 22 years old.
 

Source: ycwb.com

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Keywords: Chinese beauty pageants Miss China Miss Asia Chinese models