Special Supplement: Chengdu strutting its stuff

In 2005, Hunan Satellite Television launched its first national singing contest with the show Super Girls, which soon took the nation by storm. When the show reached its grand finale, people were surprised to find that three of the finalists were from Sichuan province. Of the two finalists that eventually remained, one had worked in Sichuan's capital Chengdu for some time.

The only finalist who had no connection to Sichuan was the first runner-up.

The following year even that changed when the first runner-up was a Sichuan girl. As footage of mothers and daughters recounting their lives in their home cities aired all across the nation, viewers had a glimpse of what it means to be a woman in this southwestern province: A Sichuan woman tends to be beautiful, with soft skin, a gift partly due to the region's high humidity. She tends to be talented and adaptive, spotting opportunities even outside the province - and she is into fashion.