Who knew when a retired Chinese farmer agreed to be photographed in some of his granddaughter and her four friend’s clothing designs, that he would immediately become the latest modelling sensation to sweep across Asia? Well, that’s the story of transsexual male model Liu Qianping – and when we heard about it we had to find out more!

We wanted to know exactly how Liu discovered his modelling potential.

“I walked into the room and saw them packing up some clothes and I thought they looked quite interesting and quite cute”, the 72-year-old told China.org,

“So I tried on a jacket and they found it really funny, and I thought it was quite funny, too. So they asked if they could take pictures of me and post them on the Internet to sell the clothes. And I said, ‘why not?'”.

Resulting images from the impromptu shoot have already gone viral on Weibo.

Liu has become affectionately known in China as MaDiGaGa (‘funny elderly’) and his granddaughter Lu Ting has enjoyed an incredible amount of promotion for brand ‘Yue Kou’ as a result.

Her grandfather not only models for she and her friends’ teenage clothing line – he gives them design advice too! “He will tell us which items should be stronger and what should be improved,” Lu said.

“He really likes bright, contrasting colors while I prefer more tone-on-tone combinations. He gives lots of advice when we try different combinations, so we have some very different styles.”

Some have criticized Lu for ‘using’ her grandfather but he insists: “I never dreamed of lucky things like these happening to me. Now, my name has spread to everywhere in the country.”

Lu has also assured any concerned parties that she has her grandfather’s best interests at heart, explaining: “we have no firm plans on how long we will continue, it depends on my grandfather. If he is happy and his health is fine, we will keep using him as our model”.

What do you think of this latest mature model’s success story?