Ladies, sharpen your high-heel spikes, it's beauty pageant season! 34 young women from across the country have qualified as finalists competing for the right to represent China at the 61st Miss World pageant. After national finals for each participating country conclude, a parade of 120 of the world's most fertile specimens beautiful will take place in London on November 6th. We've brought you a gallery of the some of the Chinese contestants involved with the pageant, and we'd be highly surprised if one of the women featured here isn't the lucky winner of a British Visa after the Chinese finals occur on September 15th. more ›

China's very first Miss World, Zhang Zilin (张梓琳) was crowned yesterday at the 57th edition of the beauty pageant in Sanya, Hainan. Miss Angola was first runner-up and Miss Mexico was second runner-up. This year's pageant coincided with World AIDS Day and was used by organisers to help raise awareness about the disease. Highlights of the show included a televised speech by former South African president Nelson Mandela, whose son Makgatho died of an AIDS-related... more ›

Image of mass games in Pyongyang from wkenney. more ›

Miss World, Miss USA, Miss Hong Kong, and now here comes Miss Blogger PRC! Earlier this month, BlogChina, a poupular -- you guessed it -- Chinese blog site held a nationwide beauty contest for female bloggers. Both the public and a panel of celebrity judges took part in deciding the outcome. In addition to the usual “hotness” factor, contestants’ writing/blogging talent also played a significant role, supposedly. One look at the final awards had us convinced that was indeed the case: Cash prizes between 10,000 and 20,000 RMB were given to the “Most Beautiful”, the “Sexiest”, the “Most Popular”, the “Most Fashionable”, and last which may or may not be the least, the “Most Talented”. Where Shanghaiist just had a few chuckles, some of the more self-righteous web crawlers felt compelled to opine. One male blogger, “Idai” had this to say: more ›

She's 178cm and 55kg, she's born in Shaanxi and goes to uni in Beijing, she likes hip-hop music, Chinese classical art and old people. She's single. Zhao Tingting, also known as Miss China 2005 sees her role as a "great responsibility" (interview in Chinese and video clip in Chinese). more ›

A country of people who hate to "lose face" is now spending millions on changing them. Finally we have an example with which to explain "irony" to a billion people. more ›