RESPLENDENT in a red and black robe, Jin Xing gazed into the mirror of her Paris dressing room and, with one well-practised move, ripped off her false eyelashes. Even without them, nobody would suspect this graceful, willowy woman was once not only a man, but a colonel in the Chinese army.

Last week China??s most startling transsexual had usually reserved Paris audiences cheering for more as she performed her latest contemporary ballet, Shanghai Tango, before fans as curious to find out about her extraordinary life story as they were to see her dance.

??The way I look at things is neither masculine nor feminine,?? said Jin after one of the shows, which was set to an eclectic range of music from rock to tango. ??I am simply interested in human beings. If we stopped worrying about our differences so much we would understand one another better.??

In a country not renowned for liberal attitudes, Jin??s life and achievements border on the revolutionary. Born in 1967 to a military father and a translator mother, Jin had excelled at gymnastics and dance by the age of four. ??I didn??t choose dance, it chose me,?? she said. ??I adored the stage at school ?? the curtain going up, then silence falling, all those lights, the magic of it all.??

He also knew he was different from other boys, and was soon having dreams in which he prayed to be transformed into a little girl. By nine, Jin was so desperate to become a dancer that he went on hunger strike to persuade his parents to let him join the People??s Liberation Army??s dance school.

Jin was granted his wish but was separated from his family and subjected to years of punishing physical training and military discipline. To teach flexibility, recruits were suspended by their feet from the ceiling for up to an hour at a time. ??It was a training which was very tough, but very beneficial,?? said Jin.

Promoted to colonel at 15, Jin was declared China??s best dancer three years later. Then came the reward ?? a scholarship to study modern dance in New York, the first of its type awarded by the communist regime.

The discovery of Broadway, Greenwich Village and the city??s gay clubs were a revelation to Jin, opening the possibilities of an alternative lifestyle that he barely knew existed. When he stumbled across an article in a magazine about sex change operations, he realised he was not alone.

By the time the colonel returned to China seven years later after working with some of America??s best choreographers, including Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, he had long hair and habitually wore a dress.

At 26 he left the army and helped by his mother??s savings set up China??s first private dance company, the Jin Xing Dance Theatre. Jin became a star, but his fame was bittersweet. ??Lots of young girls were in love with me, but I myself was a young girl,?? she said. ??I wanted my body to be in harmony with my inner being. What could be a more natural, legitimate desire??? Jin became a woman after paying ??2,500 for a series of operations at a Beijing hospital that left her confined to a wheelchair for four months. ??I have been a woman for nine years now and I know I was right. I can look at myself in the mirror now and tell myself, ??Yes, that is really me??,?? she said.

Four years ago Jin fulfilled another dream ?? to become a mother ?? by adopting three children. She says she lives as ??a normal woman?? with her boyfriend, a Franco-Italian she met three years ago in the Paris department store Bon March??.

??Behind the brutality, I search for the beauty,?? she says of her work ?? a metaphor that might also apply to her own unconventional evolution in conformist China. ??Freedom is not given to you by a country or a person. Freedom is to be found within your head and your heart.??

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