An 84-year-old calligrapher, art critic and retired government official has become China's oldest transgender individual after outing herself in an exclusive interview in an advocacy effort.
Horace Lu from Shanghaiist has translated excerpts of the interview with Qian Jinfan, who told the Southern Metropolitan Daily that she realized she was trapped in the wrong body at just three years old.
"Once I was playing outside and a relative was taking me to the bathroom," she is quoted as saying. "I remember a passerby remark, 'Oh, it's a boy?' Deep down inside, I always thought it was great to be a girl," said Qian.
She continued: "By the time I was 14, 15, there was always this sashay in the way I walked. But only when I was completely alone would I be fully myself. Whenever other people were around, I would keep it all inside."
Qian didn't start living as a woman until age 80, years after having been married to a woman. In 2010, she decided to move one step further in her transition process by undergoing surgery, but "there still remain many complications, and I have been holding out hope for some medical breakthrough," she said.
Regardess, as the site reports, she attends meetings, goes on trips and even goes to the bathroom as a woman, and writes "Male-to-Female in transition" when filling out her gender on paperwork.
"I don't think I'm inferior to anyone," she noted. "I will not give up so easily. I have done nothing wrong."
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