China's outspoken transgender queen of modern dance talks about her tough road to the top

Jin Xing, China's best known proponent of modern dance, will be making her debut performance in Hong Kong on October 26. And it's about time, she says. "I have performed all over the world, but not in Hong Kong. I think it's ridiculous," Jin says.

Such outspokenness is typical of Jin, whose biting wit and remarkable life story as a transgender performer, businesswoman and parent have made her a cultural icon.

She blames her absence from the Hong Kong stage on mainland bureaucracy: "My troupe is private, the first private dance troupe in China. The Ministry of Culture would never dispatch a private dance ensemble to an arts festival."

Watch: A solo dance performance by Jin Xing

This week, however, Jin is visiting Hong Kong as a special guest and alumnus of the Asian Cultural Council to mark its 50th anniversary; it was a scholarship from the council that enabled her to study modern dance in New York with greats such as Merce Cunningham in 1988, when Jin was still a man.

Jin was born to an ethnic Korean family in Shenyang, Liaoning, in 1967. As a boy, he became fascinated with dance and at the age of nine, went on a two-day hunger strike to persuade his sceptical parents to let him join the People's Liberation Army ballet school. Besides the rigorous dance training, he also had to undergo weapons training and later rose to the rank of colonel in the PLA dance troupe.