In pictures: The modern-day beauty contest

After decades of prohibition - Chairman Mao called them "bourgeois nonsense" - the beauty pageant has arrived in China.

"As late as 1992, when I launched my cosmetics, most women had never used cosmetics before," says Yue-Sai Kan, one of China's first cosmetics entrepreneurs.

But over recent years the cosmetics industry - and beauty pageants - have seen huge growth and are now worth billions of dollars, in a country where it is still possible to find job adverts offering higher wages for more beautiful women.