[GeorgeEckland]

Taiwanese TV host Liching : Both man and wife
Posted: 29 January 2010 1317 hrs


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'Diamond Club' host Liching. -Photo from 'Diamond Club' official website





HONG KONG: Popular Taiwanese television host Liching, who married a man 14 years her junior in 2002, was not born a hermaphrodite as she had claimed six years ago but was a man, revealed the Taiwanese doctor who treated her.

Hermaphrodites are people born with ambiguous genitalia.

Dr Zhang Qizhong wrote an article in a Taiwanese medical journal a year and a half ago to share his experiences in his 35 years of practicing medicine.

In his article, Dr Zhang described how he helped a male patient undergo sexual reassignment procedures to become a woman. That patient was revealed at the end of his article to be Liching, better known in Singapore as the husky voiced host of the variety show "Diamond Club" on Channel U.

According to Dr Zhang's article, he sent Liching to Singapore for her sex change operation in 1981 as the procedure was illegal in Taiwan at that time.

He went on to claim that Liching was definitely born male as her 23rd pair of chromosomes consisted of one X and one Y chromosome. The 23rd pair of chromosomes in women consists of two X chromosomes.

When questioned by reporters, the doctor explained on Wednesday that he did not write the piece to expose Liching's past, but merely wanted to share his experiences.

He said that he revealed the patient's identity "because she [Liching] had already released an autobiography that dealt with her past [gender-related] issues and publicly announced that she was a transgender individual".

He added that he simply wanted to encourage people to face their sexuality, reported Hong Kong entertainment rag Next Magazine.

In reality, Liching wrote in her autobiography that she was born Wu Chungming, a hermaphrodite, not a male, to a mayor father in Chingshui, Taiwan in 1962. She changed her name to Wu Mingen after undergoing a sex change operation and acquiring a new identity card that stated she was a female.

Many say that Dr Zhang acted unprofessionally when he revealed his former patient's identity in his article.

According to Taiwan's Ministry of Health, breeching doctor-patient confidentiality carries a 250,000 Taiwan dollar (S$11,000) penalty.

However, Zhang Dacheng, head of the Taichung City Medical Association, the organisation that published the medical journal, said Dr Zhang had done nothing wrong.

He pointed out that Dr Zhang's articles merely discussed a past medical case and was written in a professional publication that was not available to the public.

He added that the association reserved the right to take legal action against Next Magazine as it used information within the journal to break the story, without obtaining prior consent from the medical association.

Queen of Auction falls from grace?

These recent revelations have cast doubt on Liching's original gender and the accuracy of her autobiography. However, her success in the entertainment world has never been in question.

Liching hosts numerous popular television shows and is known as the "Queen of Auction" in Taiwan's Eastern TV Auction Channel.

She is the top auctioneer and star of the channel and holds multiple sales records, such as selling 380 one-carat diamonds in 80 minutes, 700 computer notebooks in 85 minutes and bringing in 200 million Taiwan dollars (S$8.7 million) worth of sales in just one hour.

Her manager, a man named Little Dragon, once claimed that she made even more money than Eastern TV group president Gary Wang.

Even with credentials like these, it is unknown how the fallout from this incident will affect her employment status, though Eastern TV did not react when she revealed in her autobiography that she was born a hermaphrodite.

Liching's lawyer said in a statement on Wednesday that the host was distraught after hearing the news and even broke down in the washroom. However, Liching had "resolved to turn this sorrow into a source of strength and focus on her work".

- CNA/ha