Former model Men Jiahui will participate as a female honor guard on the Sept. 3 V-day parade. (Photo : Xinhua)
A female honor guard is earning people's attention even before the Sept. 3 V-Day parade at the iconic Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Men Jiahui, 23, is one of the thousands of the parade's participants who will join other countries' troops to stage a historic commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Men, who joined the army to pursue her dream of becoming a female honor guard after her Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology graduation in July 2014, was a well-known car model in the country.
Through her personal Weibo account, she also revealed that she finished 11th in a modeling contest of the state-run China Central Television (CCTV).
The former model is a step closer toward realizing her goal when on May 12, 2014, she, along with other female honor guards, debuted at a diplomatic event and earned worldwide acclaim.
The female honor guards have bachelor's degrees and some other higher qualifications. They have an average age of 20 and an average height of 1.78 meters.
As part of their preparation for the anticipated parade, the female honor guards had to overcome figure differences between men and women during trainings. Their male counterparts, on the average, have wider bodies and are 1 centimeter taller.
With such differences, the female honor guards are required to adjust movements and ensure that there will be identical horizontal spacing between them.
Han Jie, who is in charge of the PLA Guard of Honor, said, "The female honor guards have to widen their elbows while the males narrow their elbows."
