A pretty face and much, much more

It is no surprise if beauty queens are amateur models or television personalities. In fact, these are paths that pave the way to a beauty title. But how about a titleholder who does commissioned paintings, weaves carpets and has a pet lizard?

The reigning Miss Laowai China, 23-year-old Ana Ropot from Moldova, is all of the above. Ropot spent much of her childhood visiting her maternal grandparents in Glingeni, a farming town in the Moldovan northwest. "In late autumn, the beginning of winter, all the women gather together and start doing handcrafts - knitting, embroidery, even doing carpets," says the fifth-year international tourism management student at the Beijing International Studies University.

It was also the farm that cultivated in her a kinship for animals. In her Beijing apartment off Chaoyang Park are a handful of housemates with at least four legs: an aquatic turtle that lives with fish and snails, a rabbit, ladybugs and a lizard. "I didn't want a pet lizard, but I saw him all on his own in a shop and felt sorry for him since shops usually don't take good care of an animal that's on its own," Ropot says.