If you thought Caitlyn Jenner was the most famous trans woman on the planet, you’d probably be wrong.
In fact, that honour surely goes to China’s Jin Xing, whose TV show draws 100 million viewers a week, and who has been openly trans since 1996.
(Photo MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)
China’s most popular TV hostess, often dubbed the country’s Oprah, began her career as a dance prodigy.
From age 9 she was recruited to be part of the Chinese military’s dance troupe, a major part of the army’s propaganda machine.
There she found herself training in ballet, opera, dancing and acrobatics, alongside firing guns and detonating bombs.
After leaving the military, she studied as a dancer in New York, where she first found the language to express her own identity.
“Now I was free to discover myself,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “Maybe I’m gay? But I didn’t think so.
“Then I went to the gay bars, met a gay friend, but I said, ‘No, no, I’m not gay.’ My sexuality is still like a female’s.
“That’s when I discovered words — transsexual, transgender. I said, ‘OK, I belong to that small island.’ Then I started researching.”
After several years training in New York, then touring and teaching in Europe, Xing returned to China in 1993. Three years later she became the first public figure to transition in the country.
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