China’s most celebrated dancer (and most famous transsexual), Jin Xing (Golden Star), was born into a male body, as the only son of ethnic Koreans. Her father was an army officer and her mother a translator. By age nine, Jin Xing had become the youngest dancer ever enlisted when she earned a place in Liaoning’s People’s Liberation Army Song and Dance Academy, eventually serving as a colonel. In the late 1980s she was the first Chinese dancer to receive an arts scholarship to study in America. In New York, she was instructed in modern dance techniques by luminaries such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Jose Limon. After hanging with a gay crowd (and winning “Best Choreographer” at the 1991 American Dance Festival, no less), she moved on to Rome where she learnt about gender reassignment and sex change operations. Returning to China in 1993, Jin Xing began making enquiries about her sex reassignment, subsequently undergoing gender-reassignment in 1995 at Beijing Medical University. Jin Xing is the artistic director of the Beijing Modern Dance Ensemble. She has adopted a baby. Isn’t the Sun in Leo (exactly conjunct the Twelfth House cusp!) just perfect for someone named ‘Gold Star’ (who as a dancer-choreographer won acclaim for her performance of a piece called “Sunflower”!). With the rare Pluto-Uranus conjunction placed precisely on her Ascendant, Jin Xing is a leader of her generation who has raised enormous awareness (Uranus) about (trans)sexuality (Pluto in Virgo). Since she became the first public personage in China to surgically change their gender, each year about a hundred of her compatriots have followed her example. With Venus conjunct her rising Pluto-Uranus she has become a Chinese cultural icon known for her beauty, delicate features, and stylish clothes, and modern (Uranus) dance (Twelfth House).
references Colonel Jin Xing: China's Most Emblematic Transsexual A Film by Sylvie Levey, Pascal Vasselin and Arnaud Hamelin.
Sy Scholfield
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