Yue-Sai Kan knows what it means to make a time commitment. Whether it's hosting a television show, launching a cosmetics company or training a beauty pageant contestant, the 62-year-old Guangxi native devotes all her attention to a project. 'Once you commit to something, you put 100 per cent of your time into it because you believe in it,' she says. 'I can take a project on and really drum into it.'

Such intensity has propelled Kan from hosting two groundbreaking television shows, Looking East, in the United States and, One World, on the mainland, to founding China's first global cosmetics brand and her present role as national director of the Miss Universe China pageant. She has also written several best-selling books, created a line of Asian dolls, launched a retail store, produced Emmy award-winning documentaries and raised millions of dollars for charitable foundations. 'I choose to do whatever I feel like doing,' says Kan, who is single. 'It's not like I have a boss who tells me what to do. I say I want to write a book, so I write a book.'

Since becoming the pageant's national director in February, she has not had a single day off. 'The Chinese feel they are working all the time,' she says. 'The concept of time is so different. Maybe that's the reason why the economy in China grows so incredibly fast. They say to themselves, 'I take calls at any time and any hour'.'