Updated at 9:13 a.m. ET: After the dramatic nighttime escape of Chen Guangcheng from house arrest in his Chinese village, one of the first people to know that the blind lawyer was safe in Beijing was thousands of miles away — in Midland, Texas.

Pastor Bob Fu, 44, says he knew of Chen’s escape three days before the security guards surrounding the house discovered it. He says he was among the first to receive and post a 15-minute video of Chen, made in hiding, appealing to Chinese President Wen Jiabao to bring to justice the local officials who illegally imprisoned him and his family for months. Fu says he also had a hand in preparing U.S. officials for Chen’s escape and arrival at the U.S. Embassy, while also helping lay the groundwork for alternatives, the details of which he says he cannot divulge.

Fu knows China’s security apparatus from personal experience. He made his own escape from China, arriving in the United States as a refugee with his wife and newborn son 16 years ago.

Now, through his Midland-based nonprofit China Aid, Fu is one of the leading voices on behalf of religious freedom in China, connected with activists in his home country and respected on Capitol Hill.

"Bob Fu is one of the most credible people you’ll ever find about what is going on in China," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who chairs the Human Rights Subcommittee within the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. "He’s very well connected and knows people inside of China who are the agents of reform — people like Chen who (take action) because they want a better China."

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According to tax documents, China Aid has raised several million dollars to fund legal counsel for "house church Christians," financial support for the families of jailed dissidents and publicity for human rights cases in China. In extreme cases, China Aid has helped fund "logistics" for an underground railway, Fu says.

In China, worship is allowed only in state-sanctioned churches, mosques and synagogues. Evangelizing outside those sites and worshipping in independent churches, often called "house churches," is prohibited.

China censors 'Shawshank' as Clinton heads to Beijing amid dissident drama

Fu’s activism goes back to the Tiananmen protests of 1989, when he led a group of fellow students from Liaocheng University in Shandong province to join the massive rallies in the capital. After the crackdown on demonstrators he was one of many student activists required to attend special political study sessions and write self-criticism day after day. He worried that he would be forced to leave his hard-won position at the university.

During this time, Fu said, he read a book given to him by American missionaries who were teaching English in China. It was the story of a famous Chinese intellectual who was addicted to opium in the early 1900s, but was able to shake the drug after he converted to Christianity.

"I was really, really struck by the story," Fu said, in an interview with msnbc.com. "I came to the realization if you want to change China, the first thing you need to do is change people’s hearts. And if you want to change other people’s hearts, you first you have to change yourself."

Fu and his wife, Heidi Cai, began holding underground worship services and Bible studies, he said. At the same time, he was teaching English at the Communist Party School in Beijing.

"I was God’s double-agent," he said, chuckling.

In 1996, they were arrested and held in jail for two months, and then placed under house arrest, Fu said. Then they received word that they soon would be jailed again, he said, in the “sweep” that preceded China’s Oct. 10 National Day.

By this time, Fu’s wife was pregnant with their first child, he said, but without the necessary permission from the government, which controls when a woman is allowed to have her one child. If she had been found out, she would be forced to have an abortion, Fu said.

So in the dark of night, Fu escaped through a second-story bathroom window and Cai left in disguise, he said. They fled to the countryside, Fu said, where they were protected by "house church brothers and sisters."

Fu said that with the shelter of this network, the help of a Christian policeman and travel documents obtained by a highly placed businessman, they were able to join a tour that went to Thailand and then Hong Kong, which was still under British control. Just three days before the territory was transferred to Chinese sovereignty, Fu and his wife were give refugee status, and flew to the United States.

NBC sources: Blind activist is under US protection

Fu and Cai lived in a suburb of Philadelphia, where he started China Aid in his garage while attending Westminster Theological Seminary. They later moved to Midland, Texas, where they are raising their three children.

What prompted Fu to set up China Aid was a 2002 crackdown on a group of Christians in a house church in Hubei province that led to many arrests, among them five people who were sentenced to death, he said.

Fu and a group of contacts in the Christian, dissident and exile communities started publicizing the case and raising money, he said. Ultimately, Fu said, they used the funds to pay for 58 lawyers to defend the accused. They contacted the media, making the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

"That year, all the five death sentences were overturned," Fu said. "It was a major legal victory, and even the 'evil cult' charge was removed."

A group of activists who came of age as he did during the Tiananmen movement, are now human rights lawyers, many of them Christian, he said. Fu said he taps into this network, and links them to Washington by picking up the phone.

'Little ants'
Fu compares himself and fellow human rights activists to "little ants" forcing "one case after another into courts, moving around and mobilizing and going through all the technical procedures" in place under China’s laws, but often not observed or even taken seriously by officials. 

"We want to move the pile of dirt with 1 million ants," he said.

"I had never envisioned or wanted to establish (a nonprofit) like this," he said, but now that China Aid is nearly 10 years old, Fu is gratified by some success. "We can help the persecuted, and we did advance rule of law," he said.

China Aid is doggedly following and publicizing many human rights cases around China, Fu said.

"You can write to imprisoned Christians to encourage them and to let them know that you are praying for them," through China Aid, the website says.

Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

Fu’s group also prints and distributes Bibles in China.

For Fu, the escape of Chen was a major triumph, but it also has generated new concerns — for the wife and daughter of Chen, and for those who helped get Chen to safety.

In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, Fu calls out the bravery of one such supporter, He "Pearl" Peirong, who drove Chen the 300 miles to Beijing after he escaped over a compound wall in Shandong.

"I am awed by the courage of those who helped Chen escape. Pearl told me she is willing to die with Chen because he is such a 'pure-hearted courageous person'," Fu wrote. "I was talking to her last week when she said 'guobao laile,'— that state security had arrived."

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Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng is under U.S. protection in Beijing after an audacious escape from 19 months under house arrest, a U.S.-based group said on Saturday, in a drama that threatens to ignite new tensions between the two governments.

The United States has not given any public confirmation of reports that Chen, who slipped away from under the noses of guards and bristling surveillance equipment around his village home in Shandong province, fled into the U.S. embassy.

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China has also declined direct public comment on Chen's reported escape, which threatens to overshadow a two-day meeting with top Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Beijing from Thursday.

But Texas-based ChinaAid said it "learned from a source close to the Chen Guangcheng situation that Chen is under U.S. protection and high level talks are currently under way between U.S. and Chinese officials regarding Chen's status".

"Because of Chen's wide popularity, the Obama Administration must stand firmly with him or risk losing credibility as a defender of freedom and the rule of law," Bob Fu, president of the religious and political rights advocacy group that has long campaigned for Chen's freedom, said in an email to Reuters.

On Friday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, asked about the situation, told reporters:  "I don’t have anything on this issue at all." There was no further update from the department early Saturday.

Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng escapes from house arrest

The New York Times reported that the situation leaves the United States "with a new diplomatic quandary as it seeks to improve its fraught relationship with Beijing".

The reports of Chen's escape come nearly three months after a Chinese official Wang Lijun fled into a U.S. consulate for over 24 hours on February 6, unleashing a scandal that has rattled the ruling Communist Party months before a once-in-a-decade leadership handover.

Wang's brief flight to the U.S. consulate led to the downfall of top official Bo Xilai who had been openly campaigning for a place in the inner circle of power in Beijing.

Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing lawyer and rights advocate, said reliable contacts also told him Chen took refuge in U.S. embassy grounds. The incident will be another damaging blot on China's security services, following Wang's flight, said Pu.

Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

"Everyone knew about the suffering of Chen Guangcheng and his family but nobody dared raised his head over this and ignored it," he told Reuters, referring to Chinese officials.

"Chen Guangcheng has been the most typical victim of this lawless, boundless exercise of power," said Pu. "But the day has finally come when he has escaped from it."

Chen, a self-schooled legal advocate who campaigned against forced abortions, had been held under extra-legal confinement in his village home in Linyi in eastern Shandong province since September 2010 when he was released from jail.

His confinement under relentless surveillance with his family fanned protests by Chinese sympathizers and criticism from foreign governments and groups.

Chen's escape and the furor it has unleashed could add to the headaches of China's ruling Communist Party, which is striving to ensure stability and authority before a leadership transition later this year.

It also threatens to overshadow a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who are due to visit Beijing next week for the annual "strategic and economic dialogue" between the two countries. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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BEIJING -- Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer who is also one of China’s best-known human-rights activists, has escaped after spending one-and-a-half years under house arrest.

Reuters reported that Chen, who campaigned against forced abortions, had been restricted to his village home in Linyi in eastern Shandong province since September 2010 when he was released from jail.

Groups of local thugs watched him 24 hours a day and stopped anyone who tried to visit him, sometimes using violence, including scuffling with Hollywood actor Christian Bale.

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He Peirong, an activist and longtime friend of Chen, said on Twitter that the lawyer fled on April 22.

Chen once tried to dig a tunnel in a bid to break out. However, his plan was discovered and the guards, allegedly appointed by the local government, paved cement over the ground outside his home to prevent any further attempts to flee.

Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

He Peirong told Britain's Times newspaper that Chen had planned the escape for months. She said Chen climbed over a wall while a guard wasn’t paying attention, crossed a river, and then managed to meet a friend who picked him up and drove him to Beijing.

'100 percent safe'
Reuters cited Bob Fu, president of the Texas-based religious and political rights advocacy group ChinaAid, as saying that Chen was in Beijing and "100 percent safe."

Chen’s whereabouts remained unknown on Friday. Rumors swirled that he may be hiding inside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, but officials said "no comment" when approached by media.

Boxun News, an overseas Chinese news website, uploaded a recorded video of a monologue by Chen early Friday, with a headline reading "Chen Guangcheng's three requests to Premier Wen Jiaobao."

The 15-minute video started with Chen’s brief statement: "Dear Premier Wen, it was very difficult but I made my escape. I am here to prove, all those allegations online and the accusations against Linyi (government)’s violence on me are true. And the fact is only worse."

His first request to the premier was a thorough investigation for his house arrest, and to severely punish the criminals in accordance with law. Chen claimed dozens of people had been sent to his house, violently beat up Chen, his wife and his mother on multiple occasions.

Chen named all the people who were allegedly involved, including the one who roughed up Christian Bale and CNN TV crew last winter.

Chinese hail 'Pandaman vs Batman'

Security cameras
Chen also gave details of how thugs were grouped to watch and patrol in and around his home, by roads leading to his home and the village, sometime even in neighboring villages. Security cameras were installed around his house and all connections between his home and the outside world were shut off.

Chen’s second request was to safeguard his family members' security: "I’m free now, but I worry about my wife, my child, and my mother. They’ve been persecuted for so long and I’m worried they will be victims of revenge." Chen says his wife has been beaten many times and was prevented from seeing a doctor.

Chen’s seven-year-old daughter was also constantly watched and sometimes even had her school bag searched. She wasn’t allowed to leave home after school. The electricity of Chen’s home was constantly cut off and his mother wasn’t allowed to go shopping. "I will keep on fighting if anything happens to my family," Chen warned.

Chen's last request will resonate with many Chinese citizens: to curb corruption. "When they were persecuting me last August in a Cultural Revolution style, they said, ‘we have spent even more than 60 million Yuan ($9.5 million) on you, but that doesn’t include the money used to bribe officials in Beijing!’…what a corruption."

'Abuse of tax money'
A huge amount of public money is used to crack down protests and human-rights movements, under the name of the "stability maintenance fund." In Chen’s case, he estimated millions have been spent just to keep him locked up. "The officials say they didn't get much and the largest share was taken by others. So, clearly, there is serious corruption and the abuse of tax money and power."

His escape was widely discussed on China's popular Twitter-like service Weibo, with users referring to him as "the blind man" or "Shawshank Redemption" to avoid censorship of his name.

"Some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright," the line from the 1994 drama film "The Shawshank Redemption" has been forwarded many times on Weibo today.

"Every historial period has its own blind prophet. He speaks out the fear hidden in the hearts of those who can see," said a Weibo user by the name of "Zhang Wenwu."

Self-taught lawyer
Born in 1971, Chen became blind after suffering a fever when he young. He studied medicine and later turned into a self-taught lawyer, providing legal support for disabled people and other fellow villagers over their land dispute with local governments.

Since 2005, he campaigned against local family planning agencies on human rights violations including forced abortion, forced sterilization, beatings, fines and illegal arrests. He was sentenced to four years and three months in prison in 2006 for the crime of "deliberate destruction of property and disrupting traffic."

He had been under house arrest along with his family since his release in 2010.

He Peirong, the friend and possible collaborator who published the news, has not been heard from since this morning. Her phone was picked up by a man who told journalists "you’ve got the wrong number."

It is not known if Chen’s family has been subjected to reprisals at the moment.

Chen ended his speech with a question: "Premier Wen, if you continue to neglect this, what will people think?"

(Horace Lu contributed to this report.)

BEIJING – Overseas tourists often find the menus here befuddling, for good reason.

After all, what Westerner has experience with foods like these? “Cowboy leg,” “Hand-shredded ass meat,” “Red-burned lion head,” “Strange flavor noodles,” “Blow-up flatfish with no result,” or “Tofu made by woman with freckles.”

As proud as the Chinese people are of their thousands of years of gastronomic culture, even a Chinese native can feel disoriented when going to another province, given all the different styles of cooking. Many of the food names, often unique to different provinces, get lost in translation, especially in booming cities starting to embrace overseas tourists.

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With few English speakers, restaurants usually translate their menus word by word directly from an English-Chinese dictionary. Or they just Google the Chinese characters. A photo that made the rounds online a few years ago got a chuckle from a lot of people: a restaurant with a large “page not found” sign above its door as its English name.

But the Beijing Municipal government hopes to end such unintended jokes with its new guidebook intended for the public and restaurants alike, “Enjoy Culinary Delights: The English Translation of Chinese Menus.”

The effort began in 2006 with a “Beijing speaks English” campaign. By the 2008 Summer Olympics, officials had created a draft guide with translations for major restaurants to meet the demand for arriving athletes and tourists.

“After 2008, we felt like the book was in a good demand, so we kept working on it and collected more menus. Finally we translated over 2,000 Chinese dish names,” said Xiang Ping, deputy chief of the “Beijing speaks English” committee, in an interview with NBC News.

Some of the dishes kept their original names, which people familiar with Chinese food may understand: jiaozi, baozi, mantou, tofu or wonton.

Some more complicated dishes come with both Chinese pronunciations and explanations: “fotiaoqiang” (steamed abalone with shark’s fin and fish maw in broth); “youtiao” (deep-fried dough sticks); “lvdagunr” (glutinous rice rolls stuffed with red bean paste),
and “aiwowo” (steamed rice cakes with sweet stuffing).

Chen Lin, a 90-year-old retired English professor from Beijing Foreign Language University, was the chief consultant for the book.
He told NBC News that about 20 other experts – like English teachers and professors, translators, expats who have lived in China for a long time, culinary experts and people from the media – helped develop the final version.  

So next time you're in Beijing and you are confronted with a menu item like "hand shredded ass meat," hopefully you can crack open the book to get some guidance. It means "hand shredded donkey meat."

LONDON—China’s biggest political scandal in decades has embroiled not just the U.S. but increasingly the U.K.

The series of publicly known events culminating in the removal of rising political star Bo Xilai from power appeared to have been triggered by an attempt by Bo’s former police chief to seek asylum in a U.S. consulate in Chengdu back in February.

However, it looks increasingly like it was the death of a British businessman last year that set off the chain of events.  And while it might not lead to any firings in the U.K. government, it certainly appears to have ruffled feathers in London.

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Murder in Chonqging?
Last November, Neil Heywood — a 41-year old Briton who liked to hint at a life of intrigue (his license plate contained the numbers 007) — was found dead last November in his hotel room in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing, which at the time was under Bo’s stewardship.  The cause of death was initially reported as cardiac arrest from overconsumption of alcohol.

Now it looks as though Bo’s ex-crimefighter, Wang Lijun, had evidence suggesting that Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai had engineered Heywood’s death. 

New details on Tuesday about Wang’s frantic 36-hour stay at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in February suggest he tried to give American diplomats information implicating Gu in Heywood’s death and demonstrating that Bo had tried to prevent an investigation into his wife’s role. 

In a startling revelation, also on Tuesday, sources close to the Chinese investigation told Reuters that Heywood had threatened to expose Gu’s plan to move large sums of money overseas after a dispute over his cut from the transaction.   

Chinese officials began stepping up their inquiry into Heywood’s death after Wang was whisked away by Beijing authorities following his visit to the U.S. consulate.

Scandal sends China's netizens into afeeding frenzy

In Britain, opposition members of Parliament (MPs) have raised questions whether the U.K. government had been too cautious or slow to raise concerns in the case because it did not want to jeopardize commercial prospects in China.

During Tuesday’s Parliament session, Foreign Secretary William Hague presented MPs with a detailed timetable of events surrounding Heywood’s death.

“We have demanded an investigation. The Chinese authorities have agreed to conduct an investigation. There’s been a further discussion of that this afternoon,” he told MPs.  “

Hague said Foreign Office officials first heard in mid-January of rumors circulating amongst British expats in China.

But it wasn’t until a month later — a day after Wang’s ill-fated visit to the U.S. consulate — that officials flagged the case with Hague and other ministers back in London.

British government under heat
Hague’s appearance in Parliament coincided with a visit to 10 Downing Street by one of China’s top ministers, Li Changchun.

Li — the propaganda chief and a member of the all-powerful Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee — held a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who raised the matter with him.

In an abrupt departure from the earlier muted approach, Cameron has promised to demand more from the Chinese on Heywood’s death, which has become tabloid fodder over here.  Cameron also read the riot act to his intelligence chiefs.

The Foreign Office has declined to comment further on Li’s meeting or the situation regarding Heywood.

The story, in the meantime, continues to rivet the public in Britain and in China.

“I guess it’s just a good story for normal people,” said an overseas Chinese national now living in London who only wanted to be identified as Lucy.  “Murder, high-powered officials, it’s got all the ingredients.”

BEIJING – It’s the biggest news in China in a long time – and China’s netizens are finding ways to get around censors to gossip and get the latest online rumors.

The scandal, which has spread to the New York Times front page and other Western news outlets, is centered on Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party secretary of Chongqing, China’s biggest municipality with 30 million residents, and his wife, Gu Kailai, who is a murder suspect in the death of British businessman Neil Heywood.

Before the bombshell announcement from China’s official news agency, Bo had been considered one of the top contenders for the country’s highest echelon of power, the standing committee of the politburo of the Communist Party, in the upcoming power reshuffle this fall.
 
No further official information has been released since last Tuesday’s news, but it still seems as if China’s entire population of 1.3 billion people is talking about the scandal. And despite the government’s best efforts to squelch online chatter, the country’s savvy computer fans have come up with novel ways to circumvent Beijing’s watchdogs.  

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Foreign 'rumors'
Foreign media have continued to feed the voracious appetite for more juicy details from Chinese netizens.

Many in China have made use of VPNs (virtual private networks) to circumvent the Great Firewall to access these Western reports, as well as overseas Chinese websites like Boxun, or Hong Kong and Taiwanese media reports. 

Every time a new article comes out, it’s instantly translated into Chinese and posted on Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like service, followed by tons of comments and re-tweets.

The foreign reports have delved into everything about Gu Kailai, Bo’s wife, from her business dealings to her friends and close personal relationship with Heywood.

The extravagant lifestyle of Bo Guagua, Bo Xilai and Gu’s only son, has also come under the spotlight in foreign news reports – from his hard-partying ways at expensive private schools such as, Harrow, Oxford and Harvard, to his penchant for fast cars.   

And on Tuesday Reuters added a new wrinkle to the story with a report that Bo initially agreed to a police probe of his wife's role in the murder before abruptly reversing course and demoting his police chief, which eventually led to the downfall of both men.

The government has applied every method possible to silence not just the local press, but the public passing along tidbits from the foreign reports.

Posts regarding the Bo scandal, defined by the official media as “rumors,” are usually deleted quickly after they show up online. Major web portals have been ordered to intensify their monitoring of allegedly scurrilous reports. And government mouthpieces like CCTV and Xinhua have appealed to the public to stop spreading rumors.

Chinese authorities do not issue empty threats – at least six people were recently arrested for posting gossip about a rumored military coup in Beijing.

Getting around the Great Firewall
But cracking down on gossip is an enormous project in China. The country’s sophisticated netizens – who now number up to an estimated 500 million – pass along rumors using puns, hints and words with different Chinese characters but similar pronunciation to key words.

For instance, the word “Bo,” which also means “thin” in Chinese, has been replaced by the term “not thick.” Many posts have called Bo “the not thick governor” in order to slide past censors.  

Meanwhile, some witty netizens have referred to the city of Chongqing as “tomato,” because tomato is pronounced “Xi Hong Shi” in Chinese, which sounds the same as “Western Red City.” That seemingly cryptic reference is to the “red revolutionary song” campaign initiated by Bo when he was governing Chongqing. As the son of a major leader of China’s Communist Revolution, Bo was also famous for promoting a campaign to revive Cultural Revolution-era “red culture.”

“This is the most remarkable event [in China] ever since 1976, when the Gang of Four was arrested,” said Yao Bo, a China-based Internet observer and blogger, in a phone interview with NBC News. He was referring to when the leaders of China’s disastrous Cultural Revolution were publicly purged from the Communist Party a month after Chairman Mao’s death – marking the end of one of China’s most turbulent political eras.

“When people used to talk about politics on forums or bulletins before, it was censored much more easily, since such discussion always had a topic. Weibo is like a virus, it can share information much faster and becomes uncontrollable,” Yao said.

‘We Firmly Support the Central Party’
The government has tried to introduce a counter-campaign of sorts by ordering all major newspapers and TV news channels to pledge their loyalty to the Communist Party. Within a few days after Bo’s scandal was exposed, a variety of publications had editorials with the same headline: “We Firmly Support the Central Party.”
 
Some leftist websites that openly supported a return to a Maoist-like regime have been mysteriously shut down in recent days – another signal suggesting its best time to stick to the party line. None of them has publicly stated that they are following an official order, but they all went into “maintenance-mode” simultaneously.
 
Over the last few days less gossip devoted to the Bo scandal has appeared online, which Yao attributed to both censorship and the political nature of the scandal. 

“What Bo did was to pull China in an extreme direction when nobody knew where it was going. The leftists say ‘it’s a red trial,’ the rightists say ‘it’s a disaster.’ Now he’s down, people have nothing to argue about. This is a signal sent by the highest leaders that they do not wish to go back to China’s past.”
 
“This has made netizens realize one thing: rumor is another name for truth,” said Yao.

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BEIJING – It can be exorbitantly expensive to travel in China – and Chinese tourists are fed-up.

For instance, Sanya, a big resort city on China’s southern tropical island province of Hainan, is usually a dream destination for winter holiday makers. But it is becoming a target of netizens complaining about being ruthlessly ripped off there. One irate tourist recently complained on Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like microblogging site, that he paid almost $635 dollars for a meal of three dishes including one fish.

Tourists everywhere could complain about getting gouged.  But it seems that Chinese tourists truly are justified in their gripes.

For example, a recent study published by Netease.com, one of China’s biggest Web portals,  borrowed the concept of the Big Mac index from the Economist to compare the prices of tourist attractions in both China and overseas.

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The Economist’s Big Mac index is based on the “theory of purchasing-power parity.” 

They use the cost of a Big Mac in the U.S. as a benchmark and compare it to the local cost of a Big Mac to create a comparison between the currencies.

The Netease.com article borrowed the Big Mac index idea to compare entrance fees charged at Chinese tourist attractions versus those overseas.

The statistics are eye-opening.  

For example, the cost of admission to Jiuzhaigou National Park in southwest China, a U.N. biosphere reserve famous for its shimmering turquoise lakes and snow-crusted mountain peaks, costs 220 Yuan ($35) to get in, or, 14.3 Big Macs.

In contrast, Yellowstone National Park costs an adult entering by foot or bike $12 dollars, the equivalent of 2.7 Big Macs. (It costs $25 dollars for one vehicle, including all passengers).

In Paris, the Louvre Museum costs 2.9 Big Macs, while a ticket to China’s Palace Museum inside the Forbidden City in Beijing is as much as 3.9 Big Macs.

The well-known Great Wall just outside Beijing also looks expensive – its cost is 2.9 Big Macs, compared to the Taj Mahal, which is a quarter of one Big Mac (for Indian tourists; foreigners are charged more).

No regulation
“There’s no government supervision of ticket prices,” said Wu Jingmin, a former tour guide who agitated the tourism industry in 2006 by publishing his book “How Can I Not Rip You Off? – A Tour Guide’s Monologue.” In the book, Wu exposed how the industry scams tourists, from tour agencies to restaurants and even local governments.

Besides high admission fees in China, travelers also often have to pay additional costs at tourist sites for such items as shuttle buses or cable cars.

At Changbaishan, the sacred mountain on the border of China and North Korea, a tourist must buy three different tickets at $16 a piece if they wish to take in the view from its three different peaks, and that doesn’t include the extra $14 for the shuttle bus. 

Chinese tourists also normally travel during one of the three one-week-long national holidays.  Even if that means going to Beijing’s Forbidden City with 130,000 more visitors than on a usual day, or slowly pushing their way forward on the Great Wall when it is as packed as a rush hour subway.

“The regulations for ticket prices are in complete disorder,” Wu, the former tour guide, told NBC News in a phone interview. “Local price regulators usually say ‘yes’ to tourist attractions, no matter what they want to charge. Then the tourist-trap managers give a big discount to tour agencies, who make the money from selling very expensive tickets to tourists.” 

Wu complained that little is being done to remedy the situation.  

“The natural resources belong to the people. They just build a wall around it and then charge a high ticket price to the people, who don’t really have a choice. This industry’s future is worrying,” added Wu.  

He’s says he’s planning to create his own tour packages to counter the notorious prices in Sanya.

 

The British businessman whose murder has sparked political upheaval in China was poisoned after he threatened to expose a plan by a Chinese leader's wife to move money abroad, two sources with knowledge of the police investigation said.

It was the first time a specific motive has been revealed for Neil Heywood's murder last November, a death which ended Chinese leader Bo Xilai's hopes of emerging as a top central leader and threw off balance the Communist Party's looming leadership succession.

Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, asked Heywood late last year to move a large sum of money abroad, and she became outraged when he demanded a larger cut of the money than she had expected due to the size of the transaction, the sources said.

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She accused him of being greedy and hatched a plan to kill him after he said he could expose her dealings, one of the sources said, summarizing the police case. Both sources have spoken to investigators in Chongqing, the southwestern Chinese city where Heywood was killed and where Bo had cast himself as a crime-fighting Communist Party leader.

Gu is in police custody on suspicion of committing or arranging Heywood's murder, though no details of the motive or the crime itself have been publicly released, other than a general comment from Chinese state media that he was killed after a financial dispute.

The sources have close ties to Chinese police and said they were given details of the investigation.

Bo ouster shows "ruthless" China politics: ex-U.S. envoy Huntsman

They said Heywood - formerly a close friend of Gu and who had been helping her with her overseas financial dealings - was killed after he threatened to expose what she was doing.

"Heywood told her that if she thought he was being too greedy, then he didn't need to become involved and wouldn't take a penny of the money, but he also said he could also expose it," the first source said.

The sources said police suspect the 41-year-old was poisoned by a drink. They did not know precisely where he died in Chongqing. But they and other sources with access to official information say they believe Heywood was killed at a secluded hilltop retreat, the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel, which is also marketed as the Lucky Holiday Hotel.

The sources said Gu and Heywood, who had lived in China since the early 1990s, shared a long and close personal relationship, but were not romantically involved.

The sources did not know details of the offshore transactions that Heywood facilitated for Gu, but said exposure of the deals would have imperiled her and her ambitious husband, who was campaigning for promotion to the top ranks of China's leadership. Bo has since been ousted over the scandal.

'Jackie Kennedy of China' suspected in death of British businessman

"After Gu Kailai found that Heywood wouldn't agree to go along and was even resisting with threats - that he could expose this money with unknown provenance - then that was a major risk to Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai," said the first source, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

It was not possible to get official confirmation of the case police are building against Gu. The Chinese government did not respond to faxed questions about the case. Some of Bo's leftist supporters have said the case could be a campaign to discredit him.

Gu, who is in custody and facing a possible death sentence for murder, and Bo could not be reached for comment. Bo has not been seen since appearing at parliament in March, when he held a news conference decrying the "filth" being poured on his family.

Efforts to contact Heywood's mother and sister at their homes in London were unsuccessful. The door to the mother's home carried a note saying she would not speak to reporters.

Heywood was Gu's 'soulmate'
Heywood had spent his last week in Chongqing in Nan'an district, an area politically loyal to Bo, and stayed at two hotels: the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel and the Sheraton hotel.

Staff at each hotel said they knew nothing of a British man dying there. A guard was barring access to an apparently empty row of villas within the grounds of the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel on Sunday and Monday, saying a meeting was going on.

Heywood's falling-out with Gu followed a period in which she had grown distant from her ambitious, perpetually busy husband and she had turned to Heywood as a soulmate, sources said.

"Bo and Gu Kailai had not been a proper husband and wife for years ... Gu Kailai and Heywood had a deep personal relationship and she took the break between them deeply to heart," said Wang Kang, a well-connected Chongqing businessman who has learned some details of the case from Chinese officials.

"Her mentality was 'you betrayed me, and so I'll get my revenge'," Wang said in his office, decorated with pictures of himself meeting senior officials, including Bo's late father, the revolutionary veteran Bo Yibo, a comrade of Mao Zedong.

Heywood got to know the powerful family when Bo Xilai was mayor of Dalian in the 1990s. Heywood helped with getting the couple's son, Bo Guagua, into an exclusive British school, Harrow, said one of the sources with police contacts.

The scandal over Heywood's death broke in February when Bo's former police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to a U.S. consulate after he had confronted Bo with allegations of Gu's involvement. He spent about 24 hours inside the consulate before he left into the hands of Chinese central government authorities.

Bo was stripped of all his party positions last week, ending his bid to join the upper echelons of the Chinese leadership at a Party Congress late this year, and opening the door to jockeying among rivals to get a place in the new lineup.

It was not immediately clear how Heywood would have helped Gu shift large sums of money offshore, though China's capital controls pose a formidable barrier to anyone trying to move large sums of yuan out of the country.

Chinese leaders' salaries are not extravagant and there have been questions about how Bo managed to fund the expensive Western schooling and lifestyle for his son, Bo Guagua, who also studied at Oxford university and is enrolled at Harvard. Bo said in March the schools were funded by scholarships.

The sources said there had been no sign of any dispute between Gu and Heywood until October and November when the argument over funds began. The lack of a paper trail made it difficult for police to determine how much money was involved, they added.

Police suspect Heywood took a poisoned drink, according to one of the sources, and died on November 15. Both sources said Gu was not present at the scene.

The sources said Heywood had stayed at the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel, a secluded complex of rooms and villas in green hills overlooking Chongqing that Gu Kailai had visited in the past. Staff there said they had no knowledge of the death of a British man at the hotel in November.

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BEIJING – The political shock waves set off from within a U.S. diplomatic compound by a disgruntled ex-cop in the southwestern city of Chengdu have culminated into what may well be China’s biggest political scandal in years.  

Already removed from a powerful regional post, the controversial but high-flying political star Bo Xilai has been purged from all his positions in China’s ruling hierarchy, and now his wife has been named a murder suspect, according to official announcements.

It was Bo’s former police chief and trusted aide, Wang Lijun, who ultimately led to Bo’s downfall and the criminal detention of his wife for her suspected role in the death of a British businessman. 

In February, Wang was said to have sought asylum in the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, spending roughly 30 hours there. Now in government hands, the former police chief has reportedly turned against his boss, with incriminating evidence of the Bo family’s crimes and corruption.

“No Hollywood movie can match this Chongqing political drama,” observed prominent blogger Michael Anti, referring to the megacity by the Yangtze River, over which Bo held sway for five years.

And coming in the midst of China’s once-in-a decade leadership transition – the nation’s first political succession in the glare of Internet-driven public opinion and perhaps its most challenging ever – the political upheaval has torn away the aura of leadership unity, with sobering implications for China’s future.

 

---

To Communist Party, former favored son is ‘dead’
The latest bombshell came on Tuesday when China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported that Bo’s wife Gu Kailai was detained and is being investigated for her suspected role in the “intentional homicide” of British businessman Neil Heywood – once a close family friend.

 

The other suspect in Heywood’s death is Zhang Xiaojun, who is described as an “orderly” working in Bo’s family home.

An inquiry has been re-opened on the basis of information provided by Wang, the ex-police chief, in connection with Heywood’s death. His death last November was originally blamed on “excessive” alcohol, but now poison is suspected, with a possible motive of economic disputes with the Bo family.

'Jackie Kennedy of China' suspected in death of British businessman 

Bo – a princeling, or son of one of the Communist Party elders, Bo Yibo - gained national fame for his own crackdown on crime and corruption and for his effort to revive a Maoist-era “red culture” movement.  He attempted to use the so-called Chongqing model of development as a jumping board for joining the highest leadership body in the power transition later this year. The Chongqing Model emphasized state-led investment, with development zones, transportation links and incentives to lure business, according to Bloomberg.

“He was bound to fail,” said Professor Hu Xingdou, an analyst and frequent government critic. “He was going against the tide with his Chongqing model that was repeating the methods of the disastrous Cultural Revolution.”

With the announcement of Bo’s wife’s detention, China’s Communist Party seemed to officially disown the former favored son.  

Bo’s conduct has “seriously violated the party’s disciplinary rules, damaging the affairs of the party and the country and badly harming the image of the party and the country,” the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper declared Wednesday.

The leaders’ decision over Bo “was signaling that they were able to act very quickly, to make a decision on it and to get it over with as soon as possible because they do not want to derail the actual transition that’s coming later in October this year,” according to Damien Ma, a top China analyst at Eurasia Group, a consulting firm.

Ma dismissed suggestions that Bo’s dismissal reflects any factional fighting within the Communist Party or that it would lead to Tiananmen Square protests-style turmoil. “No, him alone is not going to create another 1989,” he said.

China’s leaders essentially disowned him “very quickly, and that was clearly to show to the rest of the Party that Bo Xilai is dead; do not support him.  It’s telegraphing to his supporters that this is done, we’ve made the decision, let’s move on, I think that’s what the message is,” said Ma.

China’s challenging future
“The decision showed that the top leadership has achieved unity where before there might have been differences of opinion,” concurred Hu.  “And this unity is good for leadership succession and also good for social stability, because now no one will sympathize with Bo.”

The professor also described as “understandable the crackdown on Internet rumors while deliberation was going on, but now that there is leadership unity, it is natural to allow the freedom to comment.”

Moreover, for Hu, the decision also showed the “determination” to fight corruption and crime. “But it was accidental in this case because without the Wang Lijun incident, Bo’s crimes and corruptions might not have been exposed,” he added.

Ma was skeptical about the idea that Bo’s case had anything to larger political reform.

“The Communist Party is trying to institutionalize a lot of the norms and procedures, but at the end of the day, these mass-scale personalized politics happen, and they happen with a lot of fierceness and unpredictability,” he said, referring to the impact of Bo’s case on succession politics.

As for the challenges for China’s next generation of leaders? 

“I would say that, over the next decade, political and social risks in China are actually going to be more challenging and more difficult than the past 30 years combined,” said Ma. “They are facing a lot of issues they’ve never dealt with before, primarily socio-economic inequalities and political issues that are brought out by this enormous economic growth, and they haven’t had time to pause and think about what to do about them.  Frankly, this is a very challenging decade for China internally.”

Social media afire
Not surprisingly, China’s blogosphere spun into a frenzy in the hours before the fate of Bo and his wife was officially announced, culminating in a face-off between netizens and Chinese Internet authorities.

As early as Tuesday afternoon, people forwarded posts that “a very important announcement” would be made on the primetime news program. By the time the news was finally read out on the late evening bulletin at 11 p.m., virtually every post on Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like service, was about the fall from grace of Bo and his family.

Meanwhile, a battle between the online “rumor spreaders” and government “rumor cleaners” raged on.  Spokesmen from leading Chinese websites such as Baidu, Sina and Tencent pledged on camera they would do their best to develop and deploy an advanced prevention system—fortified with human monitors 24/7 to prevent the spread of false information.

“We will absolutely prevent Weibo from becoming a hotbed of rumors,” said Chen Tong, the chief editor of Sina.com which hosts of Weibo.

But rumors – especially in China – often spread too quickly to contain.

And, it would appear, sometimes stories that start as rumors end up being true.

Months ago, people were talking about Heywood’s mysterious death and speculating about Bo’s ouster, but the posts always wound up being deleted minutes after being posted.

“While you are trying to refute a rumor, that rumor becomes true. Why bother to refute? Today’s rumor is tomorrow’s truth,” said one user called Yuan Tengfei on his Weibo page.

“You want us to sing red songs, but you are more black than the black society. This is sarcastic,” said another Weibo user called Longcan.  (In Chinese, “black society” means mafia.)

Boxun – an overseas Chinese Website censored in China for its bold reporting on mainland politics – fed sleepless, fascinated Chinese readers with even more dramatic rumors soon after last night’s news.  Boxun’s latest report alleges that Mrs. Bo was involved in multiple murders and that the order for getting rid of Heywood came directly from her husband, because the Englishman knew the family had transferred millions of dollars of assets to foreign countries.  (A common practice among many of China’s wealthy families.) 

Teng Biao, a prominent human rights lawyer, joked on his Twitter page: “I almost want to write a movie script. Mafia, affair, international espionage, guns, murder, trial, princeling, coup. This movie would be a big hit."

Researcher Isabella Zhong contributed to this report. 

 

Updated at 9:45 p.m. ET: The Chinese Communist Party suspended high-flying politician Bo Xilai from its inner circle Tuesday following speculation that he is connected to the murder of a British businessman, China’s news agency Xinhua reported.

In addition, Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, once a celebrated lawyer, was jailed, as was a Zhang Xiajun, who worked in the family’s home, the Guardian of London reported.

Bo, 62, had been suspended from his position as Communist party boss in Chongqing last month after the city’s former police chief defected to the U.S. Consul and alleged that Bo had ties to the murder.

---

The British businessman, Neil Heywood, was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing on Nov. 15. At the time, police said he died of alcohol poisoning, but doubts were raised later and the U.K. embassy asked Chinese authorities to investigate further, the BBC reported.

The news agency said that Chinese law enforcement determined that Heywood had been killed and that Gu and Heywood had been fighting over unspecified “economic interests.”

Days before he was dismissed, Bo said at a news conference that some people were pouring “filth on my family.” He and his wife later disappeared from public view.

Fall from grace: China leadership contender Bo Xilai sacked

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Tuesday he welcomed China's announcements on its investigation.

"It is a death that needs to be investigated in its own terms, on its own merits without political considerations," Hague told BBC television.

The decision to banish Bo from the Central Committee and its powerful, 25-member Politburo effectively ends the career of China’s most brash and controversial politician.

Bo and his wife had been called the “Jack and Jackie Kennedy of China,” according to the BBC. The son of a prominent Communist leader, Bo had steadily climbed the party ranks; observers of Chinese politics believed he would have been a contender when the party chooses its top leadership later this year, as it does once a decade.

Gu, an accomplished lawyer who also came from an influential Communist family, closed her law practice as her husband became increasingly powerful. In recent years, her health declined, a family friend told the BBC, and she stayed home to read books.

Ed Byrne, an American lawyer from Denver, Colo., told the BBC that when he knew Gu, she was attractive, charismatic and funny.

“They were the modern liberal element there," Byrne said.

Reuters and NBC News contributed to this report.

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BEIJING – A day after installing home cameras to parody the Chinese police's 24-hour surveillance of himself, Ai Weiwei says he has not received any adverse reaction so far from authorities.
 
"Nobody cares I guess, or maybe they have no idea yet," Ai told NBC News in a phone interview. "Normally they don't respond so fast."

The slow response might also be attributed to the fact that China was observing the last day of a three-day holiday in observance of the Tomb Sweeping Festival Wednesday.
 
To mark the one-year anniversary of his detention at Beijing’s international airport amid a government crackdown on dissent, Ai installed home cameras positioned over his computer, bed and courtyard that stream a 24-hour video at weiweicam.com. At one point, he was shown sleeping like a log.

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei sets up live webcams at his home

The site appeared be down – or perhaps blocked – when we tried it Wednesday.

---

After he was picked up by authorities a year ago, Ai was detained and kept in isolation for 81 days on alleged tax evasion charges. Since his release in June, he’s been under house arrest which involves constant surveillance by Chinese authorities.
 
"They have 15 cameras around my house, and now I have four of them in my bedroom and around my home. This is to mark the day one year ago when they detained me," Ai said.
 
"But this is also a gift," he added. "This is a chance for people who miss me or who feel sad about my disappearance to see me anytime with the click of a computer. It's a kind of gift for them."
 
There is no mistaking Ai's political message. Referring to the authorities, he said this is also a way to "make them feel vulnerable about their invasion of other people's private space which is now a practice in many states, not just in China, as the technology of surveillance becomes very common."
 
"The issue of invading other people's privacy is a global issue, it exists in many countries in varying degrees, but I have a very strong experience with this issue in the past year and this is all a reflection of that," he explained.
 
Asked whether he is concerned about any adverse reaction from the authorities, Ai replied, “I am not really concerned about any reaction, this may not make them happy, but it's OK," he said.
 
"I am an artist, my work and thinking are all my artistic expression, which also reflects the time and place I am living in," he said.
 
Ai is still facing a $2.4 million tax case, and his one-year probation is expected to end on June 22.  Asked what his plans are when he recovers his freedom to travel, Ai sounded cautious. "I don't have much illusion," he said.
 
Referring to teaching offers abroad, he said, "As a citizen of the universe, I can work in different places, but if I can travel anywhere, I will still have to start from here. But I don't have much expectation because of the reality."
 

 

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei turned his life into an unscripted version of Big Brother when he set up four live webcams at his home, BBC reported. 

Ai told the AFP he hoped the cameras -- which include one filming him while he sleeps -- will encourage transparency from all sides, BBC reported.

The artist was detained for three months last year during an overall crackdown on dissent. Following his release, authorities demanded his design company pay 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) in back taxes and fines. Activists interpreted the penalty as punishment for his criticism of the authoritarian government. He is now banned from leaving Beijing.

Ai insists he has done nothing wrong. He said the tax case against his company appeared designed to damage his reputation while intimidating him and preventing him from "taking part in public affairs and criticizing the government."

---

The artist was detained April 3 and released June 22. Chinese authorities have said that although Ai was released, he is technically still under investigation for at least a year and could be brought in for further questioning at any time.

According to the BBC, Ai said he had "no clear answers" about why he was placed under surveillance.

"In my life, there is so much surveillance and monitoring... our office has been searched, I have been searched, every day I am being followed, there are surveillance cameras in front of my house," he told the AFP news agency, according to the BBC.

"So I was wondering, why don't I put some [cameras] in there so people can see all my activities. I can do that and I hope the other party can also show some transparency."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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By Jessica Hopper and Meghan Frank
Rock Center

Jin Xing is one of the brightest personalities in China today. She’s a film star, talk show host and celebrated dancer, but it’s her life off stage that’s propelled her into the spotlight. She was the first person to have a sex change operation in China, and go public with it. Seventeen years later, she’s become a cultural icon in China and the government even uses her as an unofficial ambassador of the arts.

“They want to tell the world, ‘We do have an independent, free artist like Jin Xing,” Jin explains.

Jin recently embarked on her first U.S. tour with her company, Jin Xing Dance Theatre. The premiere was in New York City, the place where she studied modern dance 20 years ago. Now 44, her return to New York fulfilled a promise she made and kept for two decades. 

“When I left New York, I said, ‘I only come back [to] New York with my own dance company.  I don’t even come back [to] visit,” Jin told Rock Center’s Kate Snow.

Her return to New York was also the first time she experienced the city as a woman. The last time she was here, she was a man.

From an early age Jin loved to dance and perform, but he felt different from the boys around him. He preferred playing with girl’s toys and wished he was a girl like his sister. One night during a thunderstorm, he ran outside in the hopes that lightning would strike him and transform him into a girl. To his dismay, nothing happened.

---

When Jin was nine, he was selected to attend a military school for dance, but his parents didn’t approve. When they refused to send him, he went on a hunger strike for two days.

“It worked.  Then my mom said, ‘Okay, if you made a decision, you have to write a paper, promising you won’t regret your choices and you won’t put that regret on your parents in the future,” she said.

At the military school, Jin learned to fire a machine gun and blow up a bridge using a bomb, but most importantly, he learned to dance. The dance instruction was strict. The military instructors would tie each student’s leg to a vertical column so that they were forced into the splits.

“We are screaming and shouting, but the teachers, our teachers, are sitting there reading a morning newspaper and looking, ‘five more minutes.’  I think, according to America or western law, this is completely child abuse, no doubt,” she said.  “But in China culture, you have to sacrifice.”

Jin threw himself into dancing. He thought if he could only become a famous dancer, people wouldn’t pay attention to his personal life. By the time he was 18, he had won acclaim as the best male dancer in the People’s Liberation Army. He was selected to come to America to study modern dance in New York City. He arrived barely knowing any English and said at first he felt overwhelmed.

“I was standing on Madison Avenue with my backpack…I see people rushing beside me. Then I say, ‘Wow, this is my city,” she said.  “I [felt] a little bit lost because I was the best dancer of China…[but] nobody knows.”

Jin quickly found his footing, training with top tier dance companies and emerging choreographers like Mark Dendy. 

“Jin Xing was amazing, is amazing, still amazing,” Dendy said. “There’s always a look in the eye when someone’s really, really great and we just say, ‘They’ve got it.’”

Dendy said that Jin’s speed and ability to use space set him apart as a dancer.

“Pirouettes, grand jetes… he had, she had amazing air,” Dendy said.  “It’s the ability to go up in the air and have a cup of coffee and come down.”

Jin describes this time in New York as liberating but confusing. He began to date men but something didn’t feel right. He had big questions about his sexuality and his identity as a man. He wasn’t sure if he was gay, or if he was transgender and what should he do about it. He left New York for Europe, but after a few years he made up his mind to return to China and undergo sex reassignment surgery. Jin was 28 when he underwent the operation.

Jin’s mother struggled with her son’s decision. She was worried the surgery wouldn’t go well, and afraid for her son’s future. Jin was even more scared to tell his father, a former military officer and member of China’s secret police, about his decision to become a woman.

Jin told his father, “I become a woman. I become your daughter.”  Jin’s father was silent for a moment, then he got a cigarette out and said, “Okay, finally matched.’”

Her father said, ”Strangely enough, 20 years ago, I look at [you], I was wondering, I have a little boy, but you behave everything like a little girl. So after 28 years, you find yourself, congratulations.”

Jin Xing became one of the first people to have a sex change operation in China.

The surgery went well, but there were complications. The operation damaged Jin’s left leg and she feared she might never dance again, but three months after the surgery, she was back on stage in Beijing.

Her performance prompted some to complain about Jin to Beijing’s cultural bureau.

“The best male dancer becomes a female dancer,” she said.  “I think people tried to find different ways to find an explanation for me.”

Following her surgery, some said that Jin had sacrificed her body for dance or to make it more acceptable for her to date men. Jin quickly dismissed those claims.

“It’s completely for myself.  This is my life.  I have to [be] honest with my life,” she said.

Jin said at first, the Chinese authorities didn’t address her sex change.

“They stand back a little bit.  One side, they appreciate me, still appreciate that I’m a good dancer,” Jin said.  “But somehow, they have no comment, no opinion about my personal choices.”

In 2000, Jin Xing’s life changed again.  She became a mother, adopting her son Leo, then her daughter Vivian and lastly, her little boy Julian.

She was content as a single mom, until she unexpectedly fell in love with a German man on a flight from Paris to Shanghai.

“I’m in the lounge and I’m waiting for boarding and a Chinese lady appears at the lounge.  I wouldn’t say low key.  She was wearing a long leather coat, miniskirt, leather boots, Louis Vuitton bag on one side and a Chihuahua in her hand,” said Heinz Gerd Oidtmann.

The two were seated next to each other on the plane and quickly connected. The next day, Oidtmann called Jin and asked her out.

On their first date Jin revealed to Oidtmann that she was once a man.

“I was shocked,” Oidtmann said.  “This image of a sexy, attractive woman was gone and I was really confused.”

Oidtmann took a day to sort his thoughts but he returned to Jin and said that he wanted to continue to see her. A year later, he proposed and they’ve been married for seven years. But Oidtmann admits it’s still strange for him to see photos of his wife as a man.

“Somehow, I’m not really connected to that part of her life.  I want to keep pure the female image that I have of my wife and it is very purely a female impression that I have of her,” he said.

It’s been 17 years since her sex change, and Jin Xing’s star continues to rise. In addition to dancing and choreographing, she’s acting in films and appearing on China’s versions of Dancing with the Stars and American Idol. Her popularity continues to grow and the regime that was once quiet on her sex change now pushes her out front as a cultural leader.

“They give me the space to become who I am in China as an independent artist and [at the] same time, I’m getting a lot of positive image [for China] as an artist, as a cultural ambassador for China,” Jin said.

The Chinese government, while more comfortable with Jin, still monitors her closely.  She says the government watches what she posts on China’s version of Twitter and keeps a close eye on her dancing.

“In China, before all the performing arts are only used for propaganda use, but if the art form [is to] become independent, that takes a little time,” Jin said of China’s censorship.

And while Jin acknowledges that some people come to see her perform because of her personal transformation, it doesn’t seem to bother her.

“If my personal story can bring [the] public into the theater, I’m already successful,” she said.  “Because after one and a half hour, they’re talking about my dancing, they’re not talking about my sex change.”