Geeling Ching

In 1983, New Zealander Geeling Ching was 23-year-old and waiting tables at a Sydney cafe when she was chosen to play the lead role in David Bowie’s “China Girl.”

She says the music video and the brief romance with Bowie that followed in the 1980s were like a surreal dream and a life changer.

The death of the British rock star from cancer this week at age 69 stunned fans worldwide. Ching was watching a tennis tournament in Auckland, where she lives, when her phone started buzzing: Is it true?

She was already a fan when she met Bowie. As a teenager, she’d put Bowie’s posters up on her bedroom wall and bought one of his albums.

“There was something quite other-worldly about him,” she told The Associated Press in an interview. “He was beautiful. Just beautiful.”

The video parodies Asian stereotypes and went on to win an MTV award. At the time, the unedited version was banned from New Zealand and some other countries for a raunchy scene on a beach. A real-life romance did develop, she said. She was struck by Bowie’s intelligence, his charm and how he was so relaxed in chatting with fans.

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