Exclusive interview: 'Yes, I'm bi' declares movie starlet Bai Ling (part 2)

Bai Ling (right) in "Dim Sum Funeral"

Courtesy of 'Dim Sum Funeral'

(Part 2  of the Bisexuality Examiner interview with Bai Ling, for Part 1, click here)

It may be blasphemous to her native country, but she first discovered her attraction to other women when serving her mandatory enlistment into the Chinese People's Liberation Army where she was part of an entertainment troupe stationed in Tibet.

"I was 14 in the Chinese Communist Army and several of us women were in one room," Bai Ling explains. "I remember a higher officer in charge of the group was taking care of us all. She also had stomach-aches and she had to have one of us touch her stomach while she was in warm water in the bath. … She also had me sit on her lap, and until then I had never kissed a woman. It was strange and alluring to me, and she had me touch her every week for about one hour in the warm bath."

The close surroundings made the young girl yearn for other women. "We were with each other 24 hours a day, taking showers, washing our face and our feet and our butts with each other. We were not allowed to talk with men because it was forbidden, but it was OK to be intimate with women. Sometimes, a marriage was arranged by the government or a family member, and I remember one woman who was crying because she was no longer allowed to shower with women. We were so intimate, sleeping in the same sex, touching each other. It was very erotic and very beautiful and pure."

As a young girl, she didn't ask, nor did she tell. "We did not have a concept of bisexuality, it was just being free. I began to appreciate that intimacy while we were sleeping in our bunk beds. We just started kissing, and it was great."

She is working on a book about her early youth experiences, tentatively titled "Letters from Tibet." She is also working on a personal film, now in post-production, about relationships with men called "Nipples, Pieces of My Dream."

Recently, she is getting high praise for her role as Esther, a stripper in the indie film "A Beautiful Life" which is opening in limited release through October and November. She got the role that was originally meant for Denise Richards and said she never stripped before, but went with the director Alejandro Chomski to a club on the Sunset Strip.

"I was watching the girls, and then I started dancing off in the corner and guys were looking at me, and at one point the manager asked me to stop," the actress says.

Coming up in the next year, she's playing a supportive lesbian girlfriend who sees ghosts in the upcoming "Dim Sum Funeral," she's playing a starlet with mermaid superpowers in "Hydrophobia," she's a graceful killer in "The Gene Generation," she's a mysterious social butterfly in "The Lazarus Papers," she performs her own stunts in "Crank 2: High Voltage," she's a magician in "The Magic Man" and she's a real-life high-paid prostitute in Taylor Hackford's upcoming movie "Love Ranch."

"The 'Love Ranch' role was for a 20-year-old white girl with big books named Samantha Smoke," Bai Ling says. "It has nothing to do with being Asian and it's a true story, and somehow I got the role."

In the upcoming movie "The Confidant," writer/director Alton Glass cast her in a part that was originally written for a tall African-American man named "Black." She portrayed the "Godfather"-like role with such masculine ferocity that it shocked him.

"Diversity is important," she says. No doubt her bisexuality has helped her with her roles.

She believes her sexuality also helps her with her spontaneity. When a typhoon hit Taiwan last month when she was filming "The Black Fairy Tale," she took a taxi to the most remote part to help victims as much as she could, away from the glare of the cameras.

However, some press eventually caught up with her and she wrote about her experiences on her official website: www.officialbailing.com.

"Believe it or not I do a lot of things that do not seek attention, and I felt the need to help," she says. "I could cook for them, I could comfort people, and that's what I did on my one day off. When I went back to the set they told me I was crazy because it was so dangerous."

(See movie photos of Bai Ling and an interview video below)

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