Qi Fang, China’s contestant for the Miss Universe pagent, has resigned. (abdicated?)
The China Daily story linked to above gives most of the sordid details. China has been borrowing a lot of the dying refuse of Western culture, and pagents seem to be part of it. It is a typical China mess where she signed a contract and it is not clear what the contract says and what exactly the law is. China daily suggests that the whole affiar shows that China needs more regulations. The thing I found interesting is that she claimed that she was unwilling to accept the level of personal control the pagent organizers were planning on exerting over her. 齊芳今天表示，“在 合同 內容中，出現了很多讓我很驚訝的條款。如：要求我將所有的親友名單及聯絡方式、背景、住址告訴他們；讓我在每天的24小時內，隨時聽候總部的調遣；安排助 理全天跟隨，包括會見親友、包括談戀愛，都有在場；給任何人通電話，都要告訴助理對方是什麼人，且通話時，不得避開助理；同時，必須接受該助理和我住在同 一間房間。” In particular she was unhappy that an attendent would be with her 24 hours a day, sleeping in the same room, being there when she talks to her parents and presumably putting a real crimp in her relationship with her boyfriend. She was unwilling to accept this lack of personal freedom and thus gave up a shot at something every little girl dreams of.
Well, of course not every little girl. I suppose that Qi Fang is just young enough that she could be part of the first generation of Chinese girls who could dream of being a beauty queen. One of the problems that western pagents have is that they are trying to portray the contestants as traditional and above all sexually inactive in a time when finding women like that has to be hard. The China version seems to be even more messed up. A careful study of the contestants (I take my blogging responsibilities seriously) reveals that they all at least look like modern women who would persumably not cotton to this frankly Maoist level of control and distrust. Were they afraid she might do something inappropriate with her mom and dad if left unattended? Or is she the bride of the nation who can’t be alone with any man, like the Imperial concubine in Dream of the Red Chamber? Maybe we will be lucky, and it will turn out that the historical window in which you can have these pagents will be so small in China it will close before it really opens.
