Trans comedian Sony Chan: ‘I don’t play the gender identity card’

Alien nation It was 1987, the golden era of Hong Kong. I moved to France because my father’s business had gone under and he was turning over a new leaf, joining a friend in Strasbourg to run a Chinese restaurant. I was 11. I thought it was normal to migrate to another country because many people in Hong Kong were doing that back then. But once the new life began, the sadness and homesickness set in.

My brother and I went to an international school where there was only one other Chinese kid. I became a typical Chinese migrant, making little effort to integrate into French society. I kept writing to friends in Hong Kong. Socially, I was kind of isolated as I was different from the others in many ways. But it wasn’t always other people’s fault; feelings of perceived isolation also drove me to alienate myself.

Me and the deranged housewife I’ve dreamed of becoming a movie star ever since I was a child. In 2001, after finishing my studies in architec­ture, I returned to Hong Kong and became a merch­an­diser for a French company, but I didn’t stop trying to get into showbiz.

On one occasion, I went to a casting for a jeans commercial. They were looking for two actors who could dance. I could dance and so I thought I fitted the bill, but they didn’t pick me. Later, I picked up a gossip magazine that reported on the casting. It put the candidates into three categories: “good-looking winners”; “good-looking losers”; I came under the third category, “alternative candi­dates”, which included a bald, middle-aged man and a deranged housewife. I was offended and disappointed. Hong Kong showbiz was not for me, I decided.

Class of their own When the euro arrived, in 2002, many French companies were hit hard. I was made redundant and so I returned to France and took odd jobs as a fashion stylist in Paris. I began to understand France as a class-conscious society.