A Guiding Light

For nearly five decades, Michele Choy has helped shape the annual Narcissus Pageant, elevating it from a beauty contest to a cultural celebration. 

Michele Choy insists she is ready to move on. During the pandemic, she took up indoor cycling and weight training, and she says nothing will deter her from missing her twice-weekly fitness classes. She’s been doing it for five years now, and she’s never felt better. 

But ask the longtime chair of the Narcissus Queen Pageant if it’s true that she’s stepping down from that role, and she laughs. 

“OK, there’s confusion,” she says once she catches her breath. “Well in a sense, yes, I’m stepping down. But I still want to stay connected to the chamber because that’s what keeps me connected with the community — the Chinese community.”

She’s talking about the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Hawai‘i, which hosts the Narcissus Queen Pageant, part of the annual Narcissus Festival. At 75 years old, it is one of the longest-running ethnic pageants in the nation. And for nearly 50 years, Choy has had a hand in shaping it. Starting next year, she’ll be doing it in an advisory role.   

“Michele has been the most significant person organizing this whole event,” says Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Hawai‘i president Sarah Moy, adding that Choy’s passion, drive and eye for detail have been key to the pageant’s success.

This year’s show — marking the pageant’s diamond anniversary —  is one of the bigger productions Choy has undertaken.

In addition to the Narcissus Pageant and Coronation Ball, which took place earlier this year when Alycia Abordonado was crowned queen, the Narcissus Festival Fashion Show is slated to happen  April 13 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikīkī Beach Resort Ballroom. This will be the grand finale to the 75th anniversary celebration.  

 Choy is spearheading that effort, which will pair eye-catching attire by local designer Anne Namba with wearable floral art by five master floral artists from San Francisco. The looks on the runway will be inspired by Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Filipino cultures — a nod to CCCH’s “quad partnership” with the local Japanese, Korean and Filipino chambers of commerce. 

“So you’ll have a bouquet but the bouquet is lantern-shaped and there will be these Chinese-influenced headdresses, but it will be all floral,” Choy says. “It’s not going to be about the poses, it’s going to be about the artistry. (The floral artists) will be coming six days before the show to create some of the designs to make sure it fits on the models.”

There will be about 30 looks, many worn by the Narcissus Pageant contestants, she adds. 

Her mind shifts into “organizer” mode as she ticks off the things she still needs to take care of: transporting the florals to the venue, keeping the florals fresh for the show and getting the word out, among other things.  

Choy is the queen of details. Experience has taught her that the key to ensuring the “the show will go on” is preparation. She says she has formulas in her mind for how the pageant should be run — down to how long guest speakers should talk (not long) and what to do with leftovers (she’ll make sure it gets taken care of). 

But it wasn’t always like this. 

Before she became a pageant director, she was a contestant. 

In 1975, at age 19, she entered the Narcissus Pageant. At the time, she was interested in fashion and it seemed like a fun thing to try.

She didn’t place. 

“But I enjoyed it,” she recalls. “So (the following year) I asked the producer, ‘Hey, can I help out?’ He gave me a script to type out and I thought, ‘Oh my God! This is so boring.’ But it was the only way to get my foot in the door. So I did that for about two years.” 

From there, she moved up to assistant pageant coordinator, then pageant coordinator. She remembers chaperoning contestants to makeup classes and charm school. 

Her big break came a few years later, when she was asked to produce the pageant.

“Back then it was a man’s world, so I was in shock, like, ‘Me?’” she recalls. 

That shock quickly gave way to … stress. It turns out producing an event of this scale was overwhelming for a first-timer. She says she remembers thinking, “I will never again let myself be this stressed out.”

So, when she returned the following year, she challenged herself to improve. She told herself she’d produce the pageant for five years and bow out. But by then, she says, folks were counting on her to continue. So, she kept at it.

Along the way, she began to notice contestants were not connecting to their Chinese roots.

“Some of these girls had never been to Chinatown,” Choy says. “They didn’t know what this ingredient was at the shops or what this or that other thing was.”

It made her question her own knowledge about Chinese culture.

So, in the early 1990s, she sought permission from the CCCH leadership to arrange cultural courses for contestants. 

Thanks to her efforts, for nearly 35 years now, contestants have been given the opportunity to learn Chinese calligraphy, lion dancing and martial arts, paper-cutting and knot-tying, and acupuncture and herbal medicine, among other things. 

The most in-depth class — on Chinese history and the significance of the ching ming (gravesite) ceremony — is taught by Douglas Chong, president of the Hawai‘i Chinese History Center. He starts with the contestants’ own history: Name your first ancestor from China. Tell me where in China they’re from.

“Ninety percent of the girls fail this question,” Chong says. “I gotta lead them to the graveyard, to the temple, to seek out records from the census, to go through Board of Health records, to go through obituaries, to look for your roots.” 

If they stick with him, he says, they’ll be better prepared should they make it to the Narcissus Court, not because they’ll be able to recite for judges a chronology of Chinese history, but because they’ll have gained a deeper understanding of who they are. 

This transcends the pageant. Whether contestants make it to the Narcissus Court or not, what they learn about their heritage can inspire them in ways they could not have imagined.

“Some of them were in tears because they found not only their ancestors who they never knew, they also found stories of hardship that these ancestors had to go through to bring their family to where they are now,” Chong says.   

Choy says she’s seen whole families become interested in exploring their history thanks to contestants who were moved to ask questions. 

“I’ve had girls tell me, ‘I never knew so much about Chinese culture as I learned in this pageant,’” she says. “This is the icing on the cake for me, to hear them say that.”