Pageant News Bureau

There's a line from "The Wizard of Oz" that has become an American cliche. Sometime after the cyclone, Dorothy says to her dog: "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

Nowadays, maybe even Kansas isn't in Kansas anymore. How else to explain Miss Kansas Teen International 2003? She sounds like a daughter of the Plains, and the people in the Sunflower State love her as one of their own. But when we see her, we think more "international" than we do "Kansas."

This tall prairie flower is named Lily Wu, and she's a transplant from warmer soil. This dark-haired, almond-eyed beauty was born in a faraway country with a civilization that goes back thousands of years.

No, not China. Guatemala.

"I was born in Antigua, Guatemala," says Ms. Wu. Her first language was Spanish, but she thinks it would be stretching a point to call herself Hispanic, because her roots actually are in Asia.

"My parents are originally from Guangzhou, China," she says. "They came to Guatemala for their honeymoon. And they stayed." They didn't leave Central America until little Lily was school-age, and then they moved to Kansas.

Her folks gave her the interesting background, but the rest was up to her. She had been fascinated by pageants ever since she first saw Miss Universe on Guatemalan TV, and at age 14 she persuaded her parents to let her compete in her first Kansas contest. "I raised the money. All they had to do was drive me there."

Now, as a college student, she already has an interesting competitive history, including a model search that took her to the runways of L.A. Her pageant career is blossoming, and she's studying to become a journalist.

Mostly, she wants to help people get along, to help them deal with the growing diversity of America. It sounds corny (like Kansas in August), but she's a better argument for diversity than all the speeches in the world.

How Lily Wu gotwhere she is

How Lily Wu got
where she is