Countdown to the 34th Miss Bikini International Contest

Shanghai is fast becoming George Costanza’s dream city. First, there is a sandwich craze that is sweeping through town and now the 34th Annual Miss Bikini International Pageant is being hosted by our fair city. Yesterday at Taipingqiao Lake in Xintiandi, there was a promotion for the festival that included Julia Liptakova, last year’s winner and Yang Lei, the runner up.

Unfortunately Shanghaiist was unable to attend, but if we were there we probably would have used our favorite pick-up line, “I bet you look really hot in a bikini!” (we swear it works 2% of the time). The founder and owner of the contest, Charlie See, is a 94-year-old Chinese American man, who also happens to own a dozen other pageants and is known in the industry as the "Godfather of Pagaentry”. We think he ranks up there in with the Heff in coolness and are looking forward to meeting him when the festival hits town on August 18th.

While Miss Bikini International is not as well known as the Miss Hawaiian Tropic Pageant, it really is hard to go wrong with a bikini contest. The show will be held at the Shanghai International Gymnastics Center. There will be 40 contestants from 40 countries there and they will be judged by a nine person panel consisting of top fashion professionals. While last year’s contest was held in Dongwan, Guangdong, this will be the first time Shanghai will host. We at Shanghaiist are looking forward to this event, and of course the backstage press passes! (Seriously, have you seen the ticket prices?)

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Photo from english.people.com.cn.