Beauty is in the eye of the beholder… In the West, my ‘look’ was a hit straightaway. In China it was years till people accepted me. Chinese people think I’m ugly. My eyes are too small, my mouth is too big and Chinese people don’t like freckles. I don’t care. I’ve gone on my way without looking back.

I was born on 19th October 1981, in a small village in the province of Jiangxi, in the southwest, a place surrounded by mountains, on the banks of the Changjiang (Yangtze river). My father was a hairdresser; he charged 2 yuan for a haircut. My mother was a part-time worker at the local factory. We ate meat once a week, and of course at Chinese New Year. Often people say to me that life must have been hard. For me, to be rich was to be able to buy sweets. To have two apples to eat was the definition of happiness.

I knew nothing about fashion. On our old black and white television set we could only receive one Chinese station. All my friends spent their time putting on make up, making themselves beautiful, talking about clothes. I was one metre seventy-eight tall and a bit of a tomboy. I used to bunk off school to hang out by the lake or walk in the mountains. My parents worried about me all the time. ‘You should go and see a fortune teller’,  my mother would say. I always refused.

Eventually, at the end of their tether, they sent me to the Lanshan ballet school. They were probably worried that I was going to end up a spinster. That was when I was picked to represent the town in a modelling competition taking place in Beijing, along with five other local girls. I was sixteen years old and I had never been to the capital. The competition  was tight: young women representing 45 countries and regions, each more beautiful than the next. I could tell that the judges didn’t know what to make of me. In their eyes I was neither beautiful nor ugly. I was just different, which was why in the end I came second in the competition. Different – that was the word that from then on was always used to describe me.

I called my mother to tell her that I was going to try my luck in Beijing, that I wasn’t coming home. I asked her if she could send me some money. She borrowed 1,500 yuan from everyone in the village. Enough to survive for four months in a tiny studio and to eat in a cheap restaurant every day. I found a job pretty quickly. I was offered 300 yuan a day to wear a qipao, an elegant Chinese dress, in the café of the City Hotel. One evening the editor of Miss Magazine, who was sitting there in the middle of all the bustle, asked me if I had a ‘book’. A what ? I didn’t even know what it meant. The next morning I had a meeting at his office for my first casting. That is where I met my two guardian angels. Tony Li is the top hairdresser in Beijing. Feng Hai is a very famous photographer.  They watched me for a while. They asked me to stand up, to turn around.  Then they smiled. I was embarassed. It was the first time that I experienced that thrilling feeling of someone looking at me because they found me beautiful… From that day on they took care of me as though they were my older brothers. On July 28th 1999 I did my first shoot. No make up, just some baby oil on my face, my freckles, undisguised, highlighted beneath my cat’s eyes. It was like a bomb went off: Paris Match, Elle, all the magazines snatched up the pictures. Without realising it I had set off a small revolution in the staid world of Chinese fashion. ‘How could such an ugly girl be considered attractive by so many? She can’t be Chinese, she must be Korean …’

At the beginning my life as a model wasn’t easy. In Beijing I was snubbed by several agencies. Other models looked me up and down with an air of frank distaste. In 2000, the Metropolitan agency spotted me at the Beijing Hotel. They assured me I had a promising future. It took three months to get a passport from my village. I was the first ever! I left for Paris, my mind empty, feeling lost. It was too fast. I was like a blank sheet of paper. Tony and Feng, who were now my agents, guided me through it, little by little. I knew absolutely nothing about French culture. I didn’t talk for the first three months. It would take me hours to get to a casting a few minutes from my apartment. As for the food… That first year I think I must have eaten a hundred eggs a month!

Six years later I am a totally different person.

Today I speak English, as well as a bit of lousy French with my boyfriend. I am happy anywhere I go, from New York to Beijing, London to Marrakech. I bought a house for my parents in Beijing and I have paid off my brother’s and my sister’s student loans. In China you don’t talk a lot about your emotions but you take care of your family. It’s both principle and necessity.

You have to work hard, no one is going to hold your hand. I’m the eldest daughter; I’m responsible for the whole family. As long as things are going well for me, things will be okay for them.