Jin Xing

Chinese popular contemporary dancer, choreographer and actor; a pioneering transsexual who changed from male to female in 1995, paving the way for many other Chinese transsexuals to have sex reassignment surgery. She is also a mother with an adopted baby.

At 29, she had become the artistic director of the Beijing Modern Dance Ensemble, an award-winning dancer-choreographer and one of Beijing's well-connected cultural icons.

As a 9-year old dancer in a rigorous program, the young boy

started to realize he was different from other classmates. "I was 13 when I first felt sexually attracted to boys in my class and some of the male dancers in the company. That's also when I first heard the word 'homosexual'. I hated that word, I didn't want to be homosexual, but I thought, well, if I'm gay, so be it." Jin first encountered modern dance in 1987 when a cultural exchange brought several American modern dance teachers to the Guangdong Dance Academy in Guangzhou. Jin won the grant, and the following summer went to the US.

For Jin, modern dance was love at first move. "In ballet, there are so many technical tricks, it's such a strain. But modern dance feels fluid, in tune with the body's natural balance. I knew I could perform this for the rest of my life."

In New York Jin was also finally able to explore her sexuality. She first joined the gay crowd and had gay relationships. But eventually, she says, "I found myself attracted to men who love women or who are bisexual. In the end, it would always come down to him telling me, well, I love you as a person, but physically you're a man and I can't deal with that."

The fallout from the Tiananmen crackdown enabled Jin to stay in the U.S. Still in a man's body, she then spent 18 months in Rome working for one of Italy's television networks as a dancer-choreographer. There she met people who had undergone sex-change operations, and learned more about the procedures.