Yaoyao: Jin Xing Leaves China? Who Silenced Her "Sharp Tongue"?
This article provides a detailed overview of the journey of dancer and host Jin Xing, from her early years of dance training, studying abroad in the United States, and returning to China after gender-affirming surgery, to founding the first private modern dance company in China. It also documents her recent experiences and current situation, including the suspension of her television programs, the silencing of her Weibo account, the consecutive cancellations of her four-city tour at the end of 2024, and her eventual move to Paris to rehearse Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard."
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Hello everyone, I am Yaoyao Jiang, who loves to think and values logic. On October 22, 2024, Jin Xing tagged Song Shuqin, the director of the approval division of the Guangzhou Municipal Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau, on Weibo, demanding that she produce the official document (red-headed document) refusing her performance. This Weibo post received over 100 million views. Within two weeks, her performances in Foshan, Suzhou, and Shanghai were cancelled one after another. Including Guangzhou, she could not perform a single show in four cities, and not one of them provided a reason. Before this, her television programs had been suspended one by one, and her Weibo account had also been banned. By the end of 2024, Jin Xing had no stage left to perform on in China. Now, she lives in Paris. To the Chinese authorities, Jin Xing is not an outsider. She put on a military uniform at the age of nine, was a talent sent abroad by the state to study dance, and was later invited back. In 1995, after she underwent gender-affirming surgery, her father went to the local police station and changed the gender on her ID card; no department stepped in to stop it. Her television programs had extremely high ratings, and she had no official record of misconduct. What exactly did such a person do wrong? Or rather, who did she offend to be completely blacklisted? Today, let's talk about the story of Jin Xing.
I seem to have always been the person who was forbidden from becoming who I am. Sometimes, when I look back, I realize I had to go further to truly discover myself.
In early 1970s Shenyang, there was a boy who would run out into the yard whenever it thundered and rained, standing in the rain waiting for lightning. He hoped the lightning would strike him and turn him into a girl. This boy was Jin Xing. She was born on August 13, 1967, in Shenyang and is of Korean ethnicity. She later said that from the age of six, she felt she should have been a girl. When she was eight, a child intentionally called her a girl to make her angry, and she replied: This is the truth anyway. She couldn't tell adults about this thought and could only hide it in her heart. She attended elementary school at a Korean-language school, danced well, and was a little star in the school. At the age of nine, the military came to select children to learn dance; she was chosen and entered the Shenyang Military Region's cultural troupe, becoming a young art soldier. A nine-year-old child left home, lived and ate in the military, washed her own clothes, and handled her own affairs. The training in the military was very hard. Jin Xing later told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that at that time, while practicing Russian classical ballet and performing for the military, she also had to learn how to shoot guns and how to detonate bombs. A child who was convinced in her heart that she was a girl stayed in the military camp for several years.
According to rumors circulating online, she was later kept in the student class of the military unit and looked set to stay in Shenyang indefinitely. Her dance teacher in Shenyang, Song Zhaokun, had by then transferred to Beijing to teach at the People's Liberation Army Academy of Arts. People usually referred to this school as "Junyi." When Song Zhaokun heard about this, he specifically called her and advised her to take advantage of her youth to go to Beijing and take the entrance exam for Junyi to study dance properly. Jin Xing went to Beijing, entered the dance department of Junyi, and graduated at seventeen. After graduation, her official personnel file was still with the Shenyang Military Region, so she had no choice but to return to Shenyang. Upon returning, she did not have a single opportunity to perform for an entire year. It was Song Zhaokun who suggested she return to Beijing to participate in a national competition. In 1985, the first Taoli Cup Dance Competition was held, which is one of the most significant competitions in the Chinese dance world. Jin Xing won first place in the youth group. She also practiced and developed male pointe dance on her own. Pointe dance was originally a technique for female dancers, performed on the tips of the toes; no male dancer in China had ever danced like this before. A boy, using the technique of a female dancer, won first place in the country.
Jin Xing later said that by the time she was sixteen, her heart was already prepared to become a woman, but she desperately wanted to succeed in her career first. Once she had achievements, she could make this choice, and others would not be able to dismiss her easily. This wait lasted twelve years. In the meantime, she first went to the United States.
Teacher Jiang Qing personally acted as a bridge, and a cooperation agreement was signed between the American Dance Festival, the Asian Cultural Council, and the Guangdong Dance School in China. I was very honored to be one of the first students in that experimental class. In the late 1980s, the Asian Cultural Council in the United States provided funding to support Jin Xing in going to the United States to study modern dance. She was the first person from mainland China to receive full scholarships from both this foundation and the American Dance Festival. She went to the United States with a mission. Jin Xing later said that the people who brought her to the United States at the time were counting on her to return to China after her studies to develop China's own modern dance.
When she arrived in New York, she realized that dance could be performed in such ways. She said that those few years opened her eyes, and her perspective on dance changed completely. In 1991, the work she choreographed, "Half Dream," won the Best Choreography Award at the American Dance Festival. The New York Times wrote about her, calling her a Chinese genius with astonishing self-confidence. She was twenty-four that year. During her time in the United States, she got married. The other party was a woman, and the two married in 1990. Jin Xing later said quite directly in an interview: This marriage was to obtain a green card; it was a fake marriage. This marriage later lasted for ten years. When she underwent gender reassignment surgery, the two had not yet divorced, and they did not separate until 2000. After getting her green card, she could have stayed in the United States or gone to Europe. She also spent some time in Europe, performing in Italy and Belgium. In Italy, she encountered something. Once, the theater where she was performing was right next to a television station's recording studio. She saw a female host who was very beautiful and had a great temperament. The staff nearby told her that this host used to be a man and had undergone gender reassignment surgery. Jin Xing said that at that moment, she made up her mind. Once the decision was made, she also decided where to have the surgery. She insisted on having it done in China. Her reason was that she was born in China and wanted to be reborn as a person in China.
In 1993, Jin Xing returned to China. The Ministry of Culture hired her as a modern dance teacher to run a modern dance training class. At that time, she was twenty-six, had the reputation of an international choreographer, and was a returnee talent invited back by the Ministry of Culture. Two years later, she walked into a hospital in Beijing. During the 1995 Spring Festival, Jin Xing returned to Shenyang for the holiday. At the dinner table, she told her parents about her plan to undergo gender reassignment surgery. According to her later account, her parents cried on the spot, and they had no heart to prepare the New Year's Eve dinner. She was the only son in the family. Jin Xing told her parents that if she continued to live like this, she would either go crazy or take a desperate path. Her sister was also on the side helping to persuade them. Finally, her parents nodded. According to rumors, her father said: "When you were a child, I felt you were like a girl. After 28 years, you have finally found yourself."
My father was a typical Chinese soldier. I told him that I had become a girl. My father paused for a long time, smoked a few cigarettes, and then he looked at me and said: "You have finally become yourself. Congratulations."
Jin Xing once said that if her parents didn't agree, she would never do it. On April 5, 1995, Qingming Festival, Jin Xing lay down on the operating table of Beijing Xiangshan Hospital. She was twenty-eight years old that year. This surgery had almost no precedent in China at the time. The state had no administrative regulations, the hospital had little experience, and she had very few cases to refer to. Before entering the operating room, she said a sentence: I have handed over this life of mine to Heaven, do whatever you see fit. The surgery was done in several sessions. The first time was the chest. She chose two hundred and fifty grams of silicone, because if it was too big, it would affect her dancing. The second time was to remove the Adam's apple and body hair. To clear the hair completely, the hair follicles had to be destroyed. The doctor said that if local anesthesia was used, the lips would swell and stitching would easily become crooked, so Jin Xing decided not to use anesthesia. Her mouth was stitched with dozens of stitches. The biggest surgery took sixteen hours, with four hours of massive bleeding in the middle. After the surgery, her weight dropped from one hundred and twenty jin to ninety-six jin. A urinary catheter is usually inserted for two weeks, but she had it for two and a half months. One night, urine could not be drained, and her stomach was bloated and painful, so the doctor massaged her for an hour and a half. The most fatal part was her legs. On the operating table, one of her calves was pressed for a long time, and after the surgery, her left leg was paralyzed. For a dancer, this was almost equivalent to the end of her career. The doctor told her that she might never be able to step onto the stage again.
At that 1 year, rescuing me twenty-eight years old, was a dancer, the entire professional state, Jin, could I really leave dance and the stage from now on? Xing said that in the middle of the surgery, there was a moment when she regretted it and doubted whether she had chosen wrongly. But she didn't stop.
I said to myself Jin Xing, if what you love is those applauses and flowers, trophies and honors, those things will really leave you. From now on, you are just an ordinary eggplant. But if what you love is dance, then even if one day you really can't stand on the stage anymore, you can still do a good job related to dance, and you can even go to the mountains to teach children to dance.
Director Zhang Yuan was holding a video camera at the time, following and filming from before the surgery to after the surgery. This documentary is called Miss Jin Xing, and it wasn't released online until 2011. There are footage of the surgery in the film, as well as her talking about her past facing the camera before the surgery. After the surgery, Jin Xing's father went to a police station and changed the gender on her ID card. She said to her father: Your son has become your daughter. Luo Mei, this preservation is also the same.
Jin Xing became the first person in mainland China whose transgender identity was officially recognized by the authorities. This matter did not cause much disturbance at the time, no department came out to oppose it, and the police station did not make things difficult for her. Fourteen years later, that is in 2009, the Ministry of Health issued management specifications for gender reassignment surgery. According to this specification, people applying for surgery must not be in a married state. When Jin Xing had the surgery, that green card marriage was still active. If according to the 2009 regulations, she could not have had this surgery in 1995. In October 1995, her legs had not fully recovered when she returned to the rehearsal hall, and while still injured, she rehearsed a modern dance called Red and Black. Next, she was going to do something that no one had yet succeeded in doing in China. In 1996, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture invited Jin Xing to form the Beijing Modern Dance Company. In 1998, that Red and Black rehearsed with injuries won the Wenhua Award from the Ministry of Culture. Also in this year, she left the Beijing Modern Dance Company and opened a bar in Sanlitun. The bar was named Banmeng, using the name of the dance she choreographed in New York in 1991. In 1999, Jin Xing made a decision: to run a dance company herself, without being affiliated with any state unit, and to find the dancers and funding herself. This was the Jin Xing Dance Theatre, the first private modern dance company in China. Running a private dance company was not easy. Jin Xing later told China Daily that twenty-five years ago she didn't think too much, feeling that she just needed to find a group of young people who liked modern dance to dance together, and only later found that everywhere was difficult. In 2000, the dance company moved from Beijing to Shanghai. This year, she choreographed a modern dance in Shanghai called Shanghai Tango, which was about the city of Shanghai. In the same year, she led the dance company to perform Carmina Burana at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Starting in 2002, the dance company began overseas tours, visiting more than twenty countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. In 2005, Carmina Burana was performed in Paris. Abroad, she represented modern dance in China. To this day, the official website of the Shanghai Municipal Government still has a page introducing the Jin Xing Dance Theatre, stating that it is the first private modern dance company in China. She also adopted three orphans. On February 1, 2005, she married Hans, a German, and the three children had a father. By this time, Jin Xing had a dance company, a home, a reputation on the international stage, and was an artist that the government could showcase domestically.
It was also from this time on that she began to appear on television more and more. Jin Xing appeared on television earliest as a judge. She was a judge on Dragon TV's Dance to Excellence, speaking directly and mercilessly, and the audience gave her a nickname called Poisonous Tongue.
I like this paragraph, what's wrong with me? Handle your stock stuff, you give the ticket, I don't give the ticket and that's it, simple.
In 2011, Zhejiang Television invited her to be a judge for the talent show Extraordinary. Before the show reached the finals, an incident occurred. On the night of September 20, 2011, Jin Xing posted on Weibo. She said she could not go to the weekend finals because the production team had just received a notice from the Zhejiang Provincial Radio and Television Bureau prohibiting her from sitting in the judge's seat. The reason was her transgender background. At 8:07 the next morning, she posted again. She said that Cao Qitai, the chief director of Extraordinary, saw the notification document with his own eyes, and it was written clearly on the document that this was the exact reason. She also wrote that after her Weibo post went out, Zhejiang Radio and Television immediately took out its anger on the staff members, blaming them for leaking the document. She said: What a joke, can't you dare to act and take responsibility? Later she added that those people at Zhejiang Radio and Television were truly boring to the extreme. The key to this matter was this document. The authorities originally did not plan to make the reason public, but the director saw the document, and the reason written on it was also revealed. Although Jin Xing did not get a copy of this document, she knew it truly existed and what was written on it. Her response was written very clearly. She said that she was a citizen of the People's Republic of China, and her transgender identity had been recognized by national law sixteen years ago. She had now formed a family with a German national, adopted three orphans, and was using her own dancing to give back to society and the cultivation of the country. She said whether she was a judge or not was not important to her, but she would never accept openly conducting gender discrimination against a citizen. She also said that the discrimination and insult against her by Zhejiang Radio and Television hurt her family, and she would never tolerate it. These posts were reposted and commented on by tens of thousands of netizens. Celebrities like Song Dandan, Ke Lan, and Jia Zhangke all stood up to support her. In that exact same year, the 1995 documentary Miss Jin Xing was released online after sixteen years. The media started adding the three words transgender person in front of her name again. Jin Xing said in an interview that sixteen years later, people were still calling her a transgender dancer, and her eleven-year-old son even said these media outlets were truly boring. This was the first time Jin Xing openly conflicted with official departments. She knew about that document, had an ID card modified by the police station sixteen years ago on her person, and public opinion was also on her side. This time, she did not suffer a loss. Four years later, she got a show named after herself.
On January 28, 2015, The Jin Xing Show premiered on Dragon Television. The show was produced by the Canxing team, with Jin Xing acting as both producer and host, partnered with Shen Nan. It aired every Wednesday at 10:00 PM. As soon as it started broadcasting, the show became a hit. In 2015, it was the only weekday regular variety show in the country with an average viewership rating exceeding 1.2%. To this day, its rating on Douban remains at 9.2.
Jin Xing commented on the entertainment industry and social news on the show. During the broadcast of The Jin Xing Show, Etta Ng, the illegitimate daughter of Jackie Chan, and her mother Elaine Ng got into a major controversy, causing a massive stir. When netizens asked Jin Xing to comment, she said the problem in this matter stemmed from an irresponsible man. She did not name names, but everyone knew who she was talking about.
Some people liked her, while others hated her. Song Zude attacked her transgender background on Weibo multiple times, demanding that she get lost from Dragon Television. According to stories circulating online, actor Jin Dong also argued with her online, cursing her as neither male nor female. Jin Xing retorted to each of them one by one. Later, when someone asked her why she didn't go be a judge on other variety shows, she said: If I went, the shows wouldn't have any shady dealings.
In the first half of 2017, the first trouble hit The Jin Xing Show. The show suddenly stopped updating without any explanation. Word spread online immediately that she spoke too harshly and was banned. After twenty days, the show resumed broadcasting, meeting the audience every Wednesday as usual. This resumption lasted only a few months.
On August 30, 2017, Jin Xing posted on Weibo announcing that The Jin Xing Show was being suspended. She attached a photo of herself with Shen Nan and wrote: Thank you for the audience's continuous support, we will meet again. This time, Dragon Television never resumed the show. By then, the show had aired 132 episodes. At noon on September 2, when a netizen asked her the reason for the suspension, she replied: It's simply because the show was done well and had high ratings, which caused petty people to become jealous. In the afternoon she posted another message, explaining more clearly: Some people had no ability themselves, so they wrote letters to the leaders, and to protect themselves, the leaders removed the show first. Dragon Television's person in charge told the media that it was merely a schedule adjustment and a temporary suspension. Taking over the time slot of The Jin Xing Show was a weekly drama. Rumors online also claimed Jin Xing was going to Hunan Television to do a children's talk show, but Dragon Television did not respond.
Jin Xing did not say who wrote the letter. Some people online said it was Song Zude, while others said it was another host from Dragon TV itself. There is no evidence for any of these claims. Later, the new program "Tonight 80s Talk Show" (Jin Xing Show's successor), which Dragon TV had originally prepared for her, changed its name, changed its team, and had nothing to do with her anymore. Regarding this cancellation, Jin Xing blamed "villains." In her account, the problem lay with a specific person, with a leader who was timid. She did not point to anyone higher up. Four years later, what fell upon her was no longer just a single villain.
In the summer of 2021, a series of incidents occurred in the entertainment industry. At the end of July, Kris Wu was criminally detained by Beijing police. On August 2, Jin Xing wrote a couplet on Weibo to comment on the matter. The first version was: "Detaining W in July, no epidemic worries for the people; capturing L in August, zero illness for the hardworking masses," with the horizontal scroll "Peace and Prosperity." Later, she revised it and reposted it: "Detaining W in August, no epidemic worries for the people; capturing L in September, zero illness for everyone," and changed the horizontal scroll to "Harmonious Society." W refers to Kris Wu. As for who L refers to, there were various speculations online. At that time, Jin Xing stood on the side of the entertainment industry crackdown, cheering for the police arrests.
A month later, the crackdown expanded to the entire entertainment industry. On September 2, 2021, the National Radio and Television Administration issued a notice requiring programs to resolutely boycott immoral artists and eliminate so-called abnormal aesthetics like "sissy" men. At the same time, the Publicity Department of the CCP Central Committee also issued a document to carry out comprehensive governance in the entertainment sector. Jin Xing soon discovered that the entertainment industry crackdown she supported had reached her. She participated in the Dragon TV and Youku variety show "Shine! Super Brothers" and was originally a permanent guest, but when the show aired, her footage was cut out entirely. Some netizens spoke up for her, and Jin Xing reposted this: Sister Jin was still promoting Chinese culture and art in Hamburg, Germany in 2016, but back home, she has become a face that cannot be broadcast.
On December 30, 2021, the Jiangsu TV variety show "The Amazing Worker" announced its premiere date. In previous promotional materials, Jin Xing was the "Chief Spicy Officer" of the show. However, the new poster released by the production team only had five people; she was not among them. Her footage in the trailer was also cut. Jin Xing posted three consecutive Weibo messages. She said the most important person was missing from the middle of the poster. She told the production team not to stir up trouble and to state the reason. No one responded. She then directly named Jiangsu TV, asking them: Is such a positive viewpoint output a problem for Jiangsu TV? Please explain.
In these Weibo posts, she listed a list: from "The Jin Xing Show" to "Tonight 80s Talk Show," from "Shine! Super Brothers" to Bilibili's "Lang Da Lang," and then to "The Amazing Worker." She said she had been unreasonably suppressed and even banned in these programs, and that some people were abusing public power based on personal likes and dislikes, which is very unsuitable for the construction of the rule of law. This list itself explains the problem. Five programs, broadcast on Dragon TV, Jiangsu TV, Bilibili, and several other video websites. Several unrelated platforms made the same decision. Don't you think something is wrong? This cannot be explained by any single leader being timid.
That same day, the production team of "The Amazing Worker" issued a statement saying the show's broadcast was postponed, with the specific time to be notified later. Jiangsu TV did not provide any explanation for Jin Xing's issue. Neither did the other platforms. Her list was very complete, but she always blamed "someone." Jin Xing joined the military at age nine and has been in and out of the system for decades; she knows what it means for several platforms to take action at the same time. She only blamed the people below for misinterpreting the scriptures, not mentioning those above. Once the talk reaches those above, she doesn't even have the qualification to reason.
This time was different from 2011. No notification documents were leaked, and no staff members had seen anything. Her footage was just gone, and she was just not on the poster. At this time, she could still speak on Weibo. Two months later, even that was gone.
At the end of January 2022, the "Chained Woman" incident in Feng County, Xuzhou, Jiangsu was exposed. A woman chained in a dilapidated house made netizens across the country angry. On February 24, Russia sent troops to Ukraine. On Chinese social media sites, a large number of comments supporting Russia soon appeared. Some netizens discovered that searching for the phrase "Then they should bear the cost" on Weibo yielded a batch of posts that were almost identical, as if written from the same template.
On March 1, Jin Xing posted on Weibo: "The most chilling thing in 2022 is: A Chinese woman with a chain around her neck says, 'The world has abandoned me!' A crazy Russian man says, 'If you don't let me continue to be president, I don't want this world!'" She also attached a screenshot of a CCTV news anchor wearing a yellow top with a blue jacket over it. Jin Xing wrote: Judging from the color of the clothes worn by the CCTV lady, she supports Ukraine! Stop the war, pray for peace!
This Weibo post was blocked shortly after it was published. Some people thought she had deleted it herself and scolded her in the comments section. Jin Xing posted another one: I did not delete the Weibo post myself; it was blocked by the system! Those who want to scold me without using their brains, please get verified with your real name on Weibo before coming here! Expressing personal opinions, respecting all life, and firmly opposing war! This post received 45,000 likes and over 9,000 reposts. It was the last post Jin Xing could make at that time.
Subsequently, her account was banned, and over 1,100 comments were also blocked. At that time, she had over 13.5 million followers. A few days later, CCTV came out to clarify, saying that the suit worn by that anchor was actually dark green. They also said they would "continue to be guided by party spirit and express with objectivity." Along with Jin Xing, actor Ke Lan was also banned at the same time. Ke Lan is the granddaughter of the founding General Zhong Qiguang, and she had only reposted a few items opposing the war. Actor Jiang Xin posted a Weibo expressing hope for world peace, which was also quickly deleted.
Just in these few days, the Cyberspace Administration of China proposed new regulations to prohibit the "hype" of hot and sensitive events. When these people are put together, the situation becomes clear. Ke Lan is a "red third generation" with an impeccable background, yet she was still banned. Jin Xing's ban this time had nothing to do with her transgender experience. They encountered the same rule: on the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war, ordinary people cannot have their own opinions. This time, Jin Xing did not say "villains" again, nor did she name any specific unit. She no longer had a place to speak.
The ban was later lifted. She started posting on Weibo again, promoting her modern dance troupe and performances. She could no longer be seen on television, so she put all her energy into the stage. However, her mouth was still not idle. In November 2023, she posted a photo: a black dog standing under a tree, sticking out its tongue, with the caption, "Holding a pearl in the mouth, advancing and retreating with ease." Netizens generally believed she was mocking Dong Mingzhu, the chairwoman of Gree Electric, and the influencer Wang Ziru. This post also drew a lot of criticism.
She took her dance troupe and theater company on tour across the country. In January 2024, Jin Xing's stage play "Sunrise" was performed in Taiyuan. This play is a masterpiece by Cao Yu, directed and performed by Jin Xing herself. During the curtain call, a man in the audience held up a rainbow flag. Jin Xing walked to the front of the stage, took the flag from his hand, and showed it to the audience. The flag read "Love is love, love has nothing to do with gender." Then she threw the flag behind her and continued the curtain call with the actors. That day was January 13. A week later, an article on the leftist website Kunlunce named and scolded her, saying this was even worse than her mocking Dong Mingzhu. However, the matter did not escalate; the Taiyuan performance finished as scheduled, and her tour continued for the following months.
By October, Jin Xing's dance troupe prepared to perform "Sunrise" in Guangzhou at the Guangzhou Opera House in December. The performance application was submitted, but the approval was not granted. On October 22, 2024, Jin Xing posted an open letter on Weibo. It began as follows: Ms. Song Shuqin, Director of the Approval Division of the Guangzhou Municipal Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau, hello! I am Jin Xing, Artistic Director of the Shanghai Jin Xing Dance Theatre and Mars Theatre.
In the letter, she stated that she believed Director Song had rejected the approval for personal reasons. She demanded that Director Song provide a real reason for the rejection and present a formal document from a higher authority; otherwise, she asked her not to use public power for private purposes. She also said that her national tour had been going on for nearly four years, so why was she blocked at the door in Guangzhou? Some netizens asked her if she had a grudge against Director Song. Jin Xing said she didn't even know who the other person was, so where would a personal grudge come from? This Weibo post had over 130 million views. A reporter called the Guangzhou Municipal Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau to inquire, and a staff member said they were not clear about the specific situation, and as long as the documents were legal and compliant and the materials were complete, they would be approved normally.
Jin Xing's approach was exactly the same as in 2011. She pointed out a specific person, demanded a written reason, and reasoned as a citizen. But this time, the situation changed within three days. Netizens dug up the video of the rainbow flag in Taiyuan, reposting and reporting it over and over, saying that Jin Xing was promoting values that are difficult for society to generally accept. A channel on YouTube specifically posted videos saying that the day she raised the rainbow flag, she had transformed from an artist into a promoter of the gay movement, and the Guangzhou Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau's refusal to approve was upholding core socialist values. There were also articles saying that Jin Xing posting the full name of the approval officer online was using her influence to engage in cyberbullying.
Jin Xing panicked. She explained that the man holding the flag had caused a commotion among the audience, and that she had stepped forward to grab the flag and throw it away in order to calm the audience at the scene. She posted again: "I only do myself, I only represent myself, I am always Jin Xing, and it has nothing to do with gender!" She deleted the open letter written to Song Shuqin. She had also posted an image featuring a quote attributed to Lu Xun: "When ignorance becomes the mainstream, being sober is a crime." Netizens quickly found out that Lu Xun had never said those words. This post was also later deleted by her. The mistaken attribution instead became a handle for netizens to mock her, and her situation worsened.
On October 29, the Foshan Grand Theatre announced the cancellation of the Jin Xing Dance Theater's scheduled performance of *The Cherry Orchard*. On November 4, the Suzhou Lion Mountain Grand Theatre issued an announcement that the contemporary dance special *Shanghai Tango*, originally scheduled to be performed from December 6 to 7, was canceled, and ticket refunds had begun. This dance was the very one she choreographed twenty-four years ago when she first arrived in Shanghai. On the evening of November 5, the Shanghai YOUNG Theatre posted a message on its WeChat official account stating that *The Cherry Orchard*, starring Jin Xing and originally scheduled for public performance from December 20 to 22, was "canceled due to various reasons." Shanghai was the base of operations for the Jin Xing Dance Theater, where the troupe had stayed for twenty-four years. From Guangzhou, Foshan, and Suzhou to Shanghai, performances in four cities were all canceled within two weeks of each other. Not a single one stated the reason for the cancellation. Song Shuqin did not come out to respond, and the Guangzhou Municipal Culture and Tourism Bureau did not produce any documents. The red-headed official document that Jin Xing asked for never appeared from beginning to end.
In December, in an interview with Radio France Internationale, she changed her narrative for the first time. She said that the cancellation of the performances had nothing to do with the rainbow flag. The only thing she might have done wrong was to challenge the official administrative authorities from a personal perspective. She also said: loving the country does not equal loving the government, taxpayers are the masters, the government is the public servant, and it should accept the supervision of the people. A dozen days later, Singapore's *Lianhe Zaobao* reported another set of remarks from her, with a softened tone. She said that it might be due to some misunderstanding of the Jin Xing Dance Theater by cultural managers and market managers in certain places, and before the misunderstanding was cleared up, the performances were temporarily canceled, and receiving audience complaints was just normal market behavior. She said that people just need to give the audience some patience, give the market some patience, and give themselves some patience. These two sets of remarks were uttered by her within the same month. One expressed what was in her heart, while the other was intended to reconcile with the relevant departments.
In 2011, she could have said such things on Weibo, with tens of thousands of reposts. By 2024, she chose to speak to a foreign radio station. After saying these things, she went to Europe to spend Christmas with her family. In France, she even appeared on a television program. The host asked her, it seems you have encountered some trouble in China. Jin Xing said, that is why I came to the studio today. According to the retelling of an article in China, she said on the program that in 1988 she went abroad with funding from an American foundation and could have stayed in the West, but she chose to return to China, and after forty years of hard work, all her performances were now canceled without any legitimate reason.
Today the weather is exceptionally fine just right to welcome all Shanghai dancers In January 2025, the Jin Xing Dance Theater performed the contemporary dance *Trinity* in Singapore, kicking off the new year's tour. On February 27 and 28, *Trinity* was performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. In February 2025, in an interview with Radio Free Asia, she said that Beijing in the 1980s and 1990s was a lot of fun, and the whole country had a lot of drive. After 2010, the values of the entire society changed, focusing only on success and allowing no room for failure, while the aesthetic regarding women also became singular, and society became exceptionally narrow-minded. During the interview, the host asked her if Chinese society was elusive and unpredictable. Jin Xing disagreed, saying that these two terms were not particularly accurate. She said that Chinese culture is profound and rich in inclusiveness, and the inclusiveness of Chinese culture is something that lets time explain everything.
She settled down in Paris. She had received the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters awarded by the French Ministry of Culture. She opened her own YouTube channel and invited French celebrities for interviews. Domestic articles about her also took on a different narrative style. In the summer of 2025, an article widely circulated on domestic platforms claimed that she had moved into a centuries-old castle on the banks of the Seine, that the Chinese Embassy in France had issued a special statement criticizing her, that a public figure trust report showed her trust rating had plummeted by 67%, and that a so-called medical blogger analyzed changes in her body. We could not find a single source for these claims. Other articles specifically targeted her appearance and physique, claiming she had gained weight and her face had stiffened.
While these domestic articles were still writing about her, Jin Xing was in Paris preparing a play. On May 13, 2026, in the town hall of the 13th arrondissement of Paris, a local organization held a communication event for her where she introduced the play, Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard." This version of "The Cherry Orchard" was specially designed for Chinese actors by the Lithuanian director Rimas Tuminas. In March 2024, Tuminas passed away and did not get to see the day of its premiere. In August of the same year, "The Cherry Orchard" premiered in Shanghai. By the end of the year, it had scheduled a few performances in Foshan and Shanghai—the very ones mentioned earlier that were canceled.
From July 3 to 5, 2026, "The Cherry Orchard" ran for three consecutive performances at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, performed in Chinese with French and English subtitles, by the Shanghai Mars Drama Society. This play, canceled domestically, was ultimately performed in Paris. Jin Xing plays the female lead, Lyubov. Lyubov is the mistress of a Russian noble estate, having grown up right there on the estate. Shortly after her husband's death, her seven-year-old son drowned in the river beside the estate. Unable to bear the blow, she left Russia for France and lived in Paris for five years. As the play opens, she returns from Paris to the estate. The estate has accumulated debts and is eventually auctioned off. To Lyubov, the cherry orchard is not just a piece of land; it is her childhood and youth. In the play, she says that without the cherry orchard, she cannot make sense of her life; if it must be sold, she should be sold along with it. At the end of the play, she bids farewell to this house, to her youth and happiness, and then leaves the estate, returning once more to Paris.
In interviews, Jin Xing said that the character's experiences resonate with her own situation. Indeed, Jin Xing has walked almost the exact same path that Lyubov traversed. In the late 1980s, she went to the United States and later moved on to Europe. In New York, she won awards; in Italy, she made up her mind to become a woman. To stay in the United States, she got married and obtained a green card. She knew very well what life in the West was like. Yet, she still returned to her homeland. She said she was born in China and wanted to be reborn as a person in China. She underwent surgery in Beijing and established China's first private modern dance company in Shanghai, running it for more than twenty years.
In 2024, this dance company no longer had a place to perform in its own homeland. Lyubov returned to her homeland, failed to save the cherry orchard, and had no choice but to go back to Paris. Jin Xing returned to her homeland, and thirty years later, her stage was gone, forcing her to go to Paris as well. Jin Xing once said on a Radio Free Asia program that true freedom is the extent of the freedom of your thoughts. Where a person is born is not something they can choose. Where to speak and where to dance, however, is her choice. For today's Jin Xing, wherever there is freedom is home. Now, she stands on the stage in Paris, playing a woman who lost her Russian estate and returned to Paris. That is all for today. If this episode is of value to you, please like, ring the little bell, share, and subscribe to this channel. Friends who are able are welcome to join as members to support our small channel.
I am Yaoyaojiang, who loves thinking and values logic. See you next time.