Artistic transcendence meets gender politics

In China, public fascination with cross-dressing performances falls neatly into high-brow and low-brow.

What had seemed like a frivolity to me suddenly took on social gravitas when I was asked to provide comments for a reality television show to be aired later this year.

Creative Sky, on the movie channel of China Central Television, is in its fifth season, and each episode brings out a quartet of contestants who are required to conceive and make costumes and accoutrements in a certain style. Of the six episodes I took part in as a judge, two were about dressing men as women. The last time I thought seriously about this phenomenon was when the biopic Forever Enthralled, about the celebrated cross-dressing Peking Opera superstar Mei Lanfang, was released in 2008.