Jin Xing is China’s most celebrated choreographer, dancer, and transgender role model – an outspoken and inspiring figure who as she says ‘is always challenging the boundaries of Chinese society.’ With 350,000 fans on Sina Weibo (China’s Twitter), and an array of regular TV gigs, she’s also a national celebrity, and a symbol of the diversification of popular culture in contemporary China.

It gives me great pleasure to post the following edited transcription from a talk given by Jin Xing at the University of Minnesota on 16 February this year. Colloquial and compelling, the piece reads as something of a manifesto on Jin Xing’s life and dance practice, and has been edited in consultation with the speaker herself.

For those already interested in Jin Xing, get ready for a real treat. For those who haven’t heard of Jin Xing yet, allow us to introduce you to one powerful personality.

Helen Feng, lead singer of Nova Heart, has been dubbed ‘China’s Blondie’, but the comparison doesn’t go quite far enough. Sexy, provocative and confident, she’s perhaps more of a femme Jim Morrison, constantly feeling out the boundaries of appropriateness in order to nudge them that bit further. A recent stage dive left her on crutches for months, and she’s just as bold offstage as on. Intelligent and articulate, Feng brims with opinions on American imperialism, Chinese politics, and the identity of the Beijing indie rock scene.

Born in Beijing, but raised in North America, Feng has been a major shaker in Beijing music circles since moving to China in 2002. In 2004 she started the punk band Ziyo [自游], in 2007 co-founded the electro group Pet Conspiracy, and in 2009 she and her partner, Philip Grefer, founded the Chinese music collective, FakeMusicMedia. Nova Heart is Feng’s long-planned solo project, and has the full force of her energy and professional experience.

On Friday night I attended the opening of the Beijing Queer Film Festival in a gay bar in Beijing’s Gulou bar district. Held biannually, the festival is now in its tenth year, and still thrums with all the intensity of an underground, emergent community. The bar on Friday night was packed, and filmmakers invited from around the world spoke of a time when their own country’s queer community had the same sense of adversity and purpose.

The next day I spoke with the festival’s executive director, Yang Yang, a clear-thinking woman who has been the backbone of the festival since its inception. Yang is neither gay, nor a filmmaker, and so her commitment to Beijing’s queer community is intriguing.

Yang Yang’s preface to the festival program is a beautiful piece of writing that suggests some of the ongoing complexities behind identity – sexual or otherwise. Below is my discussion with Yang about her ten years running the festival, and the potential of film to communicate difference.