It is no surprise if beauty queens are amateur models or television personalities. In fact, these are paths that pave the way to a beauty title. But how about a titleholder who does commissioned paintings, weaves carpets and has a pet lizard?

The reigning Miss Laowai China, 23-year-old Ana Ropot from Moldova, is all of the above. Ropot spent much of her childhood visiting her maternal grandparents in Glingeni, a farming town in the Moldovan northwest. "In late autumn, the beginning of winter, all the women gather together and start doing handcrafts - knitting, embroidery, even doing carpets," says the fifth-year international tourism management student at the Beijing International Studies University.

It was also the farm that cultivated in her a kinship for animals. In her Beijing apartment off Chaoyang Park are a handful of housemates with at least four legs: an aquatic turtle that lives with fish and snails, a rabbit, ladybugs and a lizard. "I didn't want a pet lizard, but I saw him all on his own in a shop and felt sorry for him since shops usually don't take good care of an animal that's on its own," Ropot says.

Ropot moved to Beijing from the Moldovan capital of Kishinew, in 2006, to attend university. Three years later she won the Miss Fujian Tulou pageant, and last September was crowned Miss Laowai, a title intended to represent foreigners in Beijing.

"We were a family," she says of the 17 other contestants. "It was the first contest I joined where girls didn't try to rip each other's dresses backstage ... putting glue in shoes."

As Miss Laowai, Ropot's duties include attending charity events and expat functions. When she has time, she embellishes the designs of her clothes, makes pencil sketches or does oil paintings. Her latest work is Dor, a painting of her hometown's landmark Eastern Orthodox church, a piece commissioned by the Moldovan Embassy in Beijing. "This painting represents what I feel for my home," Ropot says. "You know when you miss something really really bad and it's eating you up inside?"

This is a sentiment that many foreigners in China understand only too well.

China Daily

(China Daily 02/01/2011 page18)