Miss Hong Kong pageant

The Miss Hong Kong Pageant (Chinese: 香港小姐競選), or Miss HK (港姐) for short, is a beauty pageant organised by the leading Hong Kong television station, TVB. In 2012, for the first time, every HK citizen with valid HK identity card was allowed to vote for who gets which position given the shortlisted three finalists. Nevertheless, this had to be abandoned at the last minute supposedly due to a server breakdown.

All participants have to have a Hong Kong ID or be born in Hong Kong (with a valid birth certificate). The age requirement is 17–27 as of 2011, though the upper age was previously up to 25. It should be noted that early contestants, such as Deborah Moore competed at as young age as 16. While there has been other Miss Hong Kong pageants in prior years producing notable titleholders such as Judy Dann (1951), Virginia June Lee (1953), Michelle Mok (1958), Laura da Costa (1967) and Mabel Hawkett (1970), the current annual TVB pageant began in 1973. Apart from the top prize winner, first runner-up and second runner-up prizes, the pageant also has other consolation prizes that vary slightly from year to year. Many Miss Hong Kong contestants have gone on to have movie careers as it is quite typical for the top contestants to garner television contracts from TVB.

The pageant is traditionally televised into two events, although this is not always necessarily the case in recent years. First, a preliminary event is held where 12 finalists are selected from a group of candidates, the number of which is usually around 20–25 (with 30 being the maximum). Then a final event is held, culminating in the announcement of the winner and the first and second runners-up from the 12 finalists. In some years, the field is narrowed down to a final 5, from which the runners-up and winner are chosen. Often several contestants dropped out of the pageant before the televised preliminary, thus there would be a candidate with #30 assigned to her, but only 25 or so contestants.

In Year 2013 Miss Hong Kong Pageant, an unusual participant had joined the local recruitment which was a non-human being – a dolphin named Ruby (Chinese Name: 白海樂), nominated by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Hong Kong to drive awareness of the plight of her species in Hong Kong. According to WWF Hong Kong, Ruby was "a true native and symbol of Hong Kong, Chinese white dolphins are creatures of majestic beauty who are facing escalating threats in their Hong Kong marine habitat. Ruby only has 61 peers left in the HK waters when compare to 158 of them in 10 years ago. Through her nomination into the pageant, we hope to raise mass awareness on the true beauty yet grave plight of the Chinese white dolphin as reclamation, increasing marine traffic and polluted waters rapidly contribute to the startling decline in their numbers," said Samantha Lee, Senior Conservation Officer, Marine of WWF-Hong Kong.