Forget the skimpily clad cheerleaders. The immaculate hostesses handing verboten medals at the Olympics have won the watcher vote for glamour.
Wearing Chinese silk dresses with their hair pulled back tightly into neat buns, the hostesses are beautiful, elegant and their eyes are three-tenths the length of their faces, as required by the Chinese selection committee.
"They ar so pretty and accurate. They smile continuously," aforesaid Debra Sinex, a tourer from Atlanta, Georgia, in Beijing for the Olympics.
At every laurel wreath ceremony sise or more hostesses ar on duty.
Two wearing "cheongsam"�- tenacious dresses�- bandstand either side of the podium spell three or more in knee-length dresses hold platters bearing the medals and bouquets of nine redness roses, with red a lucky colouring material in China and nine meaning everlasting.
But although the role looks simple, in line with China's conjure to host the perfect Games, these hostesses receive been meticulously chosen and trained.
When Olympic organisers started a search for the hostesses they issued a list of requirements for appearance and body condition that was published by Chinese media, raising eyebrows in the West because of the sexist and stereotype overtones.
Many were likewise upset by China's decision to ingest a pretty little young woman lip-synching a song at the possibility ceremony simply because the real vocalist had corrupt teeth.
Hostess candidates have to be university educated, aged 18 to 24, betwixt 1.68 and 1.78 metres in stature, with a "ruddy and shiny complexion", "elastic skin" and "a plump but not juicy body".
Their faces needed to meet standards including the ratio 'tween the "breadth of the nose and the length of the face" and "width of the oral fissure and width between the pupils", with eyes three-tenths the length of the face.
From about 5,000 applications, 297 candidates were chosen from a twelve Beijing colleges and 40 students from Shanghai to be "Olympic victory ceremony volunteers".
Five serial publication of costumes were designed for the hostesses to wear at the 302 Olympic and 471 Paralympic medal ceremonies, each for different sports and featuring traditional Chinese images such as blue-and-white porcelain, embroidery and jade.
The women have been through thorough preparation at a kind of charm thrill camp, encyclopaedism to stand for hours in high-heels and honing the pure smile exposing eight dentition by expenditure hours before a mirror with a chopstick 'tween their teeth.
"In the standing sessions, we have to stand still and smile for half an time of day or more. We too run about a chiliad metres every day for physical conditioning," one of the hostesses, Ma Sha, 20, told Reuters in front of the Games.
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