Q: What did you think you would get out of it?
A: It was more of a challenge. Just to see how far I could get. And I wanted to go to Japan and be on the Train.
Q: How did you get to be one of the two girls?
A: They had interviews. The pageant director for Hawaii met with several girls and she picked two of us.
Q: Then they sent you to
Japan?
A: No, the pageant was in Honolulu. All the girls flew in from different states to Hawaii. They had the final contest in Hawaii, so we were there and everyone else came to us. Out of 102 girls they picked one winner.
Q: How did you do?
A: I didn’t place. That was my first pageant and I was really inexperienced. I guess I wasn’t answering the questions very well.
Q: What did you do after that?
A: I was going to school and working at a gift shop in Ala Moana Shopping Center.
Q: How did you get involved with Miss Asian World?
A: My mom came home one day and said there’s a pageant going on. And they were going to have it in Taiwan. I said okay. I remember my mom saying, “Why don’t you join just for the fun of it? Maybe you’ll get to travel.” The previous one they had it in the states. That was the first year they were going to have it outside the U.S.
Q: You were representing Hawaii?
A: I was representing Miss U.S. Chinese.
Q: How did you do?
A: I won. So I ended up staying there for about two months.
Q: What did you win?
A: I got a car. They gave me thirty thousand dollars instead.
Q: How’d you like the pageant?
A: I don’t think I’ll ever go through another beauty pageant again because this one was quite long. We stayed there four weeks before the pageant. Every day we were going on excursions to different parts of Taipei to orphanages, old folks homes. It was so sad. I felt so grateful growing up in America because these people had nothing, you know, and these little kids in the orphanage—you fall in love with them.
Q: Did you go down to Kaoshiung?
A: All the way south and all the way up north. And being on the road for four weks before a pageant is kind of long, so a lot of girls got catty. I was happy to be there because I kind of didn’t care if I won. I just wanted to be in a new place out of the country. It was really exciting for me, I had a lot of fun. I learned a little Chinese but I lost it.
Q: Before that had you spoken any Mandarin or Cantonese?
A: No. When I won—the people, they weren’t offende but they were like, How come you don’t speak Chinese? [putting on a hick drawl] Waal, that’s b’cuz I’m lak fourth generation.
Q: What distinguished you from the other girls?
A: I was caring, and I was just more down to earth.
Q: Were the judges observing you?
A: Every day.
Q: Were you the tallest?
A: No, there were girls that were taller. Seven or eight [of 42] were taller. But a lot of them were professional models. As long as they were a quarter Asian, they could enter, so a lot of them were mixed. I honestly didn’t think I was going to win until that night. So when they read my name for the top 10 or 12, I was totally excited. Okay, we got it—I’m happy enough that I got that far.
Q: Is that really what you felt?
A: Honest!
Q: You weren’t thinking, God I’ll die if I don’t win?
A: Actually, this is even funnier. They had some soap opera star or some singer as the MC. When it came down to the end, he called out the top five. I was really excited. He had the printout and I think he thought that in Chinese you read it from bottom up so he was actually reading it in reverse. So when he was announcing the fourth runner-up he called my name. So I got my flowers and my ribbon.
Everyone’s clapping and I’m standing—it was like totally high emotion—I didn’t know what was going on. Then, they got all the way down to the last two girls and it went silent. The judges were like…! They called the MC back down there and this was all going on in Chinese so we didn’t know what was going on. He comes back and he apologized in Chinese and English and said there’d been a mixup in the computer printout, you know. And so we all had to like get back in line. I was thinking, ‘Oh my god, I’m not even supposed to be in the top five!’
Q: Was your mother there?
A: Yeah. She didn’t know what was going on. She was surprised I even made it to the top 10. We were standing in that line and he was calling it backwards. I was oblivious, I didn’t even know what was going on. Like, Duh, he’s doing it in reverse. Everyone’s like yelling from behind, going, Congratulations, Debbie!—and it just went in one ear and out the other. And I was standing there with the runner-up girl, the two of us left, and I’m still thinking, Oh my god, I hope I have a chance! Like everyone knew it was going in reverse!
Q: How did you feel when they said you won?
A: I started crying. Next
