The Beijing News borrows a picture of Maggie Cheung from Cosmo for the cover of today's Entertainment insert, "50 Most Beautiful People in China". Ms. Cheung takes the top spot, with Takeshi Kaneshiro, Little S, Zhang Ziyi, and Liu Ye rounding out the top five in this exercise that is a conscious imitation of People magazine's yearly rundown.

Unlike People, this collection namechecks Kant and Hegel for its standard of beauty, allowing the participation of some famous faces not usually associated with physical attractiveness (Liu Xiang, #8, and Jaycee Chan, #42). Apart from those few unexpected inclusions, it's mostly by-the-numbers entertainment industry celebrities, with a token author (Han Han, #21) and Go player (Chang Hao, #35).

Women occupy 32 of the 50 slots, and a majority of those are round-eyed starlets. Li Bingbing (#17) soundly defeats Fan Bingbing (#40), hopefully ending that debate. Brigitte Lin, who has been retired and out of the public eye for a decade, comes in at number 50, just barely beating out Teresa Teng. Also interesting are some of the names left off the list - Karen Mok, who has won awards for style, and Hu Bing, everyone's favorite male model, are nowhere to be found.

While there doesn't currently seem to be an index page up, this search [note: no longer working] will give you results for the original articles. Check out the rest of this post for the full list with links to photo galleries so you can judge for yourself.

Names by which the celebrities are known in English have been included whenever possible. Additions or corrections can be sent to joel at danwei dot org.

1. Maggie Cheung
2. Takeshi Kaneshiro
3. Little S, television personality
4. Zhang Ziyi
5. Liu Ye
6. Andy Lau
7. Xu Jinglei, actress, director
8. Liu Xiang, track star
9. Angela Chang
10. Zhang Jingchu, star of Peacock
11. Tony Leung
12. Karena Lam (link corrected)
13. Liu Yifei, the next Little Dragon Girl
14. Daniel Wu
15. Shu Qi
16. Rene Liu, the good thief from A World Without Thieves
17. Li Bingbing, the bad thief from A World Without Thieves
18. Faye Wong
19. Huang Xiaoming, to play opposite #13
20. Zhang Zhen, from 2046
21. Han Han, post-80s author and racecar driver
22. Fan Xiaoxuan, singer (Mavis Fan)
23. Zhou Xun, hot young actress, often paired with #24
24. Chen Kun, hot young actor, often paired with #23
25. Cecilia Cheung
26. Lin Zhiling, model
27. Stephen Chow
28. Huang Shengyi, starlet introduced in #27's Kung Fu Hustle
29. Jiang Wen
30. Twins, girl duo, but it would be unfair to leave out the ugly one
31. Wilson Chan
32. Jay Chou
33. Sun Li, TV actress
34. Jiang Qinqin, the "Tear Queen"
35. Chang Hao, chessmaster
36. Anthony Wong, passionate singer
37. Angelica Lee, the young one in 20, 30, 40
38. Gong Li
39. Gao Yuanyuan, wide-eyed actress
40. Fan Bingbing
41. Shao Lihua, the face of the Spring Festival's Thousand-hand Guanyin
42. Vicki Zhao
43. Jaycee Chan, Jackie Chan's boy
44. Liu Xiaoqing, recently revived 80s actress
45. Charlie Yeung, actress and UN Education Ambassador
46. Shirley Jiang Peilin, model
47. Joe Cheng, actor on Meteor Garden and other teen soaps
48. Sheren Tang
49. Mayday, boy band with five interchangeable members
50. Brigette Lin