Journey to Venus

With three swift, agile moves, Jin Xing whirls her long, black hair into an elegant bun and fixes it with a silver pin. She wears a tight black shirt and loose fitting crimson trousers, clothes that cover a slim but powerful body. Her expressive gestures manifest the traits of a great dancer.

Music plays in her classroom. "Shoes off, please," she tells her students, who are attending a "master class for common people" to learn about modern dance.

After a one-hour practice session, Jin and her students sat on the floor, chatting about children and how they kept fit. When Jin mentioned she is already 41 and has three children, a middle-aged woman seemed very surprised. "You have three children? How can you preserve your shape? Look at my waist!"

Jin smiles and remains silent.

Pregnancy and giving birth are impossible for Jin, who is now a wife and the mother of three adopted children.

Up until the age of 28, Jin was technically a man.

But undergoing a sex change operation was not the only dramatic event in Jin's extraordinary life.

Jin's dancing story begins at age 9 when she joined the army to learn how to dance.

At 18, Jin won a national award and built a name as a top dancer on international stage after five years of performing in America and Europe.

Jin now runs her own dance company and is planning to build her own theater.

Jin Xing means "golden star" or Venus. Although her friends describe her as the sun, rather than any star - because of her warmth and passion - Jin believes she shares something in common with her namesake planet.

While most planets in the solar system orbit the sun in a counter-clockwise direction, Venus spins the other way.

At age 9, Jin insisted on leaving her hometown in Shenyang and joined the army, which had the top dance troupes in China at that time. Little Jin left home despite a father's worry and a mother's tears.

In 1988, she secretly left for America to learn modern dance, although it was not considered mainstream art in China then.

At 28, she changed her gender by a series of miserable operations and was later confronted with inevitable social backlash of such a radical move.

The name Jin Xing, for a long time, is closely connected with mystery and legend. However in 2005, the star finally fell back to earth, when she met her husband Heinz-Gerd, a German who worked in Shanghai.

The two met on a flight and Heinz enthusiastically initiated their courtship three days later. About one year later he proposed.

"I am lucky because Heinz never tried to change me," Jin says.

After master class, Jin changes from her practicing suit into a long pink dress and brown cotton shirt, with a neckline laden with lace.

Her soft hair falls on her broad shoulders, which are draped by a brownish red scarf.

"I told Heinz clearly before we got married that I am not a woman who needs a husband," she says.

"I can take care of my children. So if you enter my life, please make it better, otherwise I don't need it."

Jin's first adopted son, Dudu, did not like the "strange man" in his home at first.

When he was only 3, he would hit Heinz's arm whenever the man touched his mother. And he would even call Jin's ex-boyfriend's name just to irritate him.

But three years down the track, a healthy father and son relationship has blossomed.

At home, Jin is still the absolute authority and uses a three-grade disciplinary system with her children. The first-grade method involves the look of the eyes. The second-grade tactic uses the voice. Only the last grade involves beating children.

Proudly, she says she only uses first grade because her kids know who's the boss. "Mom is law" her children often say.

"How could I not be powerful?" Jin says jokingly.

"I had to make decisions on my own since I was only 9."

Six years in the army, two years in a PLA art college, and a half decade of working in foreign lands has made Jin a very independent individual.

"I treated my husband as my fourth child at first," she laughs. "But I have changed a lot and will listen to his ideas before making decisions now."

Like most career women, the elite dancer spends a lot of time balancing her work and home life.

In her Shanghai home, she is awoken by her children at 6:30am, and oversees them eating breakfast with a dizzy mind. She goes back to bed and gets up again at 8 to start her daily work schedule at her studio. She makes it a rule to eat supper with family every day.

Business dinners are scheduled at noon and parties must start after 9 pm, when her children are in bed.

She also is very open about her sex change operation with her children and has never hid the fact that she used to be a man. She says her oldest son, 8, has fully accepted the fact that they did not come from mom's belly.

Although the sex-change operation was 23 years ago, reporters still tag her as the "transwoman dancer", even in the lead up to Beijing's Poly Theater performances, which are held tomorrow and Wednesday nights.

"The transsexual operation was indeed a very important part of my life," Jin says.

"I will not shy from it. But if the society thinks that a good dancer can no longer make news, and only to put those words before her name can, it is the society that is shallow, not me."

Bjork has a song called Venus as A Boy, which is a word play on the phrase Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.

Jin's friends often made fun of her with the lyric. Sometimes they still call her gemen, which means "bro" or "guy", but she doesn't care.

"Call me sir, miss, lady or whatever, as long as you are comfortable with it," she says.

But today, her life as a man is well and truly history for Jin, who is now a charming woman, according to well-known TV anchor Chen Luyu.

"I have never seen Jin Xing not gorgeous."

Jin says there are no such thing as an ugly woman, only lazy ones.

"A necklace, or a pair high-heels, oh you should wear high heels! Ankles are god's gift to women. You should show them well."

Jin has a passion for wearing skirts. Dancers in her company say she "floats" all day in her dresses. Even when traveling on a plane, she wears long skirts.

"Someone may say it is not as convenient as jeans, but how troublesome could that be?" Jin says.

"Skirts make your whole gesture charming. Pay a little attention to your look, make everyone who sees you feel beauty, what's wrong with that?"

Her beauty does not come from designer brands or haute couture, neither does she favor make-up.

Her high-heel shoes are bought from Xiangyang Road, a street market in Shanghai, as was her scarf. Her skirt was from a young and not so famous French designer.

According to traditional Chinese "beauty" standards, Jin is hardly classified a belle. Her eyes are not big enough, and her lips seem a bit too thick.

But her flowing hair, elegant body shape, and chatty nature help form her own charisma.

"Don't forget, I had 28 years of being a man. I lived among them, listening to them talking about women all the day," she says.

"Men never like women because they were tougher or stronger than they are ... they like women because they are different."

(China Daily 05/13/2008 page18)