Betel nut beauty

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Betel nut beauty" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In Taiwan, a betel nut beauty or binlang girl (Chinese: 檳榔西施; pinyin: bīnláng xīshī; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: pin-nn̂g se-si) is a young woman selling betel nuts and cigarettes from a brightly lit glass enclosure while wearing revealing clothing. The term in Chinese comes from Xi Shi, the legendary beauty of imperial China's Spring and Autumn period. Though betel nuts are chewed in many regions in Southeast Asia, the betel nut beauty phenomenon is distinctly Taiwanese.

The original betel nut beauties were the "Shuangdong Girls" who, in the 1960s, brought glamour to the opening of the Shuangdong Betel Nut Stand in Guoxing, Nantou.^[1] The success of the marketing strategy led competitors to follow suit, and by the end of the century, betel nut stands topped with neon signs became a common feature of Taiwan. The stands appear in urban, suburban and rural settings alike.

As icons of Taiwanese culture, betel nut beauties appear frequently in art and film, notably the 2001 movie Betelnut Beauty^[2] and the 2007 art film Help Me, Eros.^[3] In 2016, director Tony Xue released Betelnut Girls, with lead actors Peggy Tseng and Paul Hsu.^[4]