The raven-haired Chinese beauty Ling Zhuo took home for the first time in China's history a third prize in the beauty contest.

Chinese mainland, the world's most populous nation, had never sent a contestant to the glitzy pageant before.

The results were decided by how each of the leading five women in the contest responded to a series of questions, ending with one they all had to answer -- "what makes you blush?"

The contestants spent three weeks practicing for the contest and taking part in preliminary rounds that narrowed the field down to just 10 of the 75 contestants. Those were not announced until the contest was underway on Wednesday night.

Then those 10 were winnowed down to five women, who faced a test of quick wits and steel nerves to answer questions in a matter of seconds -- and show a bit of style at the same time.

Zhuo became the second runner-up after the newly crowned Miss Universe 2002 from Russia, Oxana Fedorova, and the first runner up from Panama, Justine Pasek.

The 19-year-old girl is a contracted model of the Shanghai Yifei Model Agency. She was the gold prize winner of the Chinese beauty pageant in March in Guangdong Province, and chosen as Miss China to enter for the world beauty pageant.

Zhuo said she had cold right before the contest, but she was glad at the result that she was the one to rewrite China's history.

(Eastday.com May 31, 2002)