Santa Monica resident Ashley Lai once questioned whether she was “Chinese enough.” Now she is serving as a cultural ambassador for the Chinese American community after being named first princess of the 2026 Miss Los Angeles Chinatown Pageant, 32 years after her mother won the crown.
Lai, a filmmaker and New York University graduate, said the title has come to mean far more than the night she won it.
“It’s given me an opportunity to connect with my Chinese American heritage in a way I hadn’t experienced before,” Lai said.
Founded in 1963 and sponsored by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, the pageant is an annual leadership program that selects young women from the Greater Los Angeles area to represent the Chinese American community.
Lai said she doubted she would place as the lower titles were announced on pageant night.
“I remember trying to find my family in the crowd, but the blinding stage lights had turned the audience into a black abyss,” she said. “My feet had gone numb from standing in heels for what felt like an eternity, and my cheeks were aching from smiling.”
Then she heard her contestant number, 11, followed by her name.
“I felt this overwhelming wave of relief,” Lai said. “After months of consistent practice and giving everything I had on stage, it was incredibly rewarding to have that hard work recognized.”
Although she runs the pageant’s YouTube channel, Lai said she still can’t bring herself to rewatch her own crowning moment.
Lai said she once came across a framed portrait of her mother tucked away in the family’s storage room.
“She was dressed in a beautifully beaded and embroidered qipao, wearing an elegant crown with a scepter in hand,” Lai said. Her sash read “1994 Miss Los Angeles Chinatown.”
“I had only ever known her as my caring mother, not as this regal young woman with dreams and aspirations of her own,” she said.
Lai recently found the VHS tape of her mother’s pageant and had it digitized. Her mother shared the YouTube link with the rest of her court and reconnected with them.
“Going through the same experiences she did such as the long rehearsals, dress shopping, and endless public speaking practice has given me a new appreciation for a chapter of her life I knew very little about,” Lai said.
“Because I couldn’t speak Cantonese or fully participate in many Chinese traditions, I sometimes questioned whether I was Chinese enough,” she said. Meeting other young women in the pageant with similar uncertainties gave her “a sisterhood I didn’t even realize I needed,” Lai said.
As first princess, Lai has visited Castelar Elementary School in Chinatown, where titleholders read children’s books by local Chinese American authors to students.
“Seeing their faces light up as we shared these stories brought me so much joy,” Lai said. “It reminded me how meaningful representation can be, especially for young children who are still discovering their own identities and learning about the world around them.”
Representation, she said, is “about being proactive and putting in the effort to learn about your heritage and create opportunities for others to do the same.”
Lai, who grew up in Orange County and Santa Monica, said she had little connection to Chinatown before the pageant beyond what she learned from her mother.
“There is certainly a physical distance between me and Chinatown, but I’ve come to the realization that serving the community doesn’t need to be limited by geography,” she said.
She said she brings what she experiences at Chinatown events back to share with Asian American communities in Santa Monica, much as her mother once brought her Chinatown experience to Orange County.
Lai stressed that it is “not a beauty pageant, but a scholarship pageant” that celebrates Chinese American heritage and creates lasting opportunities for young Chinese American women.
Lai earned a bachelor’s degree in film and television from NYU, then moved back to California to work at Company 3, a post-production house in Santa Monica specializing in color grading and visual effects for feature films, television shows, short-form projects and commercials.
She said her family came to America from China in the 1800s, worked at California’s docks and helped build the nation’s first railroads. Her ancestors became part of the communities that shaped Chinatowns in Hawaii and Los Angeles.
“But like so many Asian American families, these stories can easily go unnoticed,” Lai said. “As a filmmaker, I’ve made it my goal to bring more authentic Asian American stories to the big screen ...”
Applications for the 2027 pageant are open until Nov. 5, and Lai encouraged young Chinese American women “who want to be part of this legacy” to apply.
For more information, visit https://www.misslosangeleschinatown.org/about.