Waking up the sleeping land: Miss Asia Siberia 2011

Friday, November 18, 2011

Miss Asia Siberia 2011

Last night was the Miss Asia Siberia beauty pageant for 2011. It has been running in Krasnoyarsk for five years now. Last year's photos can be seen here. The contestants this year ranged in age from 16 to 22. They are all students, most of them in University, some college (TAFE/ SIAST equivalents), one girl from school.

Last year the girls were all living in Krasnoyarsk, even though they originated from different parts of Siberia. This year they came from further afield. This year five girls came from further places such as Omsk, Novosibirsk, Abakan, Kemerovo and even Baskortostan.

We didn't have a friend directly competing this year, but some of our friends were still involved on some level. After the event we were even privileged enough to meet a girl from a very small Siberian nation called the Nganasan (about 1200 people in the nation).

Many people said hello to us, and we realised that we are beginning to gradually attach ourselves to the Sakha community, as well as other Siberian peoples. It was fun to re-attend an event we have been to before, and to be considered one of the crowd, even though the crowd was 99% Asian, with a handful of European Russians present.

We were in the second row, and I think I managed to take some good photos. There was a Reuters photographer at the front. I said hello to him on the way out the door at the end of the night. I fancied myself being a professional photographer for a moment and then thought, that I wouldn't want my hobby to become tiresome.

I hope you enjoy the photos and get a sense of the night.