When Liudmila of Lazy Yogi requested that I post a photo of a person that is beautiful, really beautiful, from my point of view, I thought that is a difficult task indeed. Beauty as they say is in the eye of the beholder and while Lidumila pointed out it could vary from culture to culture and from nation to nation, it cannot be denied that in any one culture or nation, it varies from person to person and even in a person, it varies from time to time according to the person's mood. I remember the days when skinny girls like Twiggy was the rage in the western world and in ancient China,Yang Kuei-fei who was the favoured concubine of the T'ang emperor Hsüan-tsung was reputed to be a plump woman. Beautiful girls I suppose are many and varied and once, in the 70s during the time when Taiwanese romantic movies were the rage in South East Asia, a classmate of mine had asked who we thought was the fairest of the female Taiwanese movie stars. Then, the shining stars included Chen Chen, Briggite Lin Ching Hsia, Joan Lin Fong Chiao, Sylvia Chang Ai Chia and Tien Niu. Chen Chen was around in moviedom the longest then and having seen and enjoyed some of her movies, I thought she was the prettiest of the lot. My friend however disagreed, saying that if one were to look carefully, the prettiest was Briggite Lin Ching Hsia. Chen Chen, he said, looked like any other ordinary girl but Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia had an aura around her, a special classy look and an iciness unlike that of the late Monaco's Princess Grace. Talented Sylvia Chang Ai Chia,I thought had a big mouth like Italy's Sophia Loren while Tien Niu, the little sister's of Shaw's star, Tien Ni, seemed to me like an ordinary noisy rough teenager with an ugly mole on her cheek. And no, I had never thought of her famous sister, Tien Ni as pretty too even though I enjoyed a Taiwanese tear jerker which she starred in where she played a suffering jilted mom separated from her kids. I think she was a bit too dark and had the face of the next door aunty. As for Joan Lin Fong Chiao who ended up as Jacky Chan's wife, she was as pretty and sweet as could be but the star aura seemed to be lacking in her. Maybe for a question like Who is the fairest of the 70s Taiwanese movie stars, perhaps we should just ask the magic mirror... Mirror, mirror on the wall; who is the fairest of them all? And you'd play the role of the mirror, wouldn't you?
Chen Chen
Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia
Joan Lin Fong Chiao
Sylvia Chang Ai Chia
Tien Niu
Tien Ni
Comments
Now I want explain the why of this question. They said, one Japanese woman was chosen for a movy some years ago because of her incredibly beauty. I don't remember the name. But when they asked the opinion of the Japanese collegues, they answered that this woman was perfectly ordinary from the point of view of a Japanese man. They like women that an european man never would look at.
Something like this. One of my collegues in museum told me this story.