Pocket resident shares her story as ‘China’s first transgender’

By Joe Perfecto

However well a married couple may know each other, it’s commonplace for spouses to keep a few secrets. Often enough, such things – which run the gamut from probably trivial to potentially tumultuous – are taken to the grave, given that the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach is the path of least resistance, and generally in the best interest of preserving household harmony. And, honestly, how many people know everything about his/her spouse anyway?

That was the approach taken by Sasha Eastley, née Zhang Kesha, who resides in the Pocket area with Bruce, her husband of 17 years.

For four decades, she kept a core aspect of her past hidden, not only from her previous and current husbands, but almost everyone else. Early on, word did leak a few times, initially bringing celebrity, but later subjecting her to a blackmailing scheme that she escaped only through repeated relocations. By the time of the Eastleys’ 2005 marriage, all that was long behind Sasha. She was beginning a new life in a new country, with a new community of friends. But no one, least of all her husband, could ever know her story – for not only might she become a social outcast, it was possible that if Bruce ever got wind of it, it could spell the end of their relationship.

For about 15 years, all was well. Then in 2019, she learned via a journalist friend that a TV documentary about her, made in a long-ago time and a faraway land, could be found on YouTube, laying her past bare. She decided that if people were going to find her out anyway, she would rather be the one to tell them.

But first, in case her friends or

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