Winner Gao Xiaodan with emcee Candice and Dirk Lindemans
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Last Saturday night I was one of seven judges for the finals of a contest called Miss Kriek 2012 held in R Lounge in the Renaissance Hotel. Kriek is made by Lindemans in Belgium and distributed by Vandergeeten in China. Winner Gao Xiaodan, who impressed the crowd during the skills session with her belly dance routine, not only gets a trip to Belgium but also a one-year contract here as a brand ambassador.
The judges were asked to give contestants a score out of ten in each of the following four categories:
- Appearance: I wasn’t so comfortable with that one so I basically gave everyone the same score.
- Talent: The performances ranged from songs to pole dances to soft shoe performances. I tended to like the acts that made me made me want to dink beer, such as the “Fly Me to the Moon” routine, rather than those that made me want to cry into it, such as covers of Adele and Celine Dion songs.
- Language skills: Quite a range here.
- Promotion ability: Each contestant performed an “ad” for Kriek and, in essence, made a pitch.
I’m not a judge at these kind of things too often — I think the last one was the Hilton’s Pole-Dancing Competition two years ago — but think these women were pretty brave to get up and perform, and then talk about it in a second language, in front of several hundred people.
(Photos courtesy of Vandergeeten)
Lindemans is one of many brewers of kriek – which means any lambic-based beer made with cherries. They’re one of the bigger ones. Others include Mort Subite, Cantillon, Belle Vue (another big maker), Boon, Timmermans and Liefmans.
There’s a whole family of beers of that sort – the unflavoured one is called gueuze and is unavailable in Beijing, as far as I know. The day it does become available here, it’ll really take me back to my childhood. OK, teenage years.