Beijing, Mar 16: A Chinese couple raised their only child for 13 years in the belief it was a girl, until a visit to the local hospital alerted them to the fact that he was really a boy, state media said on Monday. The unidentified couple, from the central city of Zhengzhou, were fooled by their child's underdeveloped sexual organs, dressing him in girl's clothes and teaching him to go to the women's room, the Zhengzhou Evening News reported.
They did not realize anything was wrong until they were baffled by a "reaction in the lower half of his body" whenever he watched pretty women on TV, the paper said.
The worried parents took their child to the hospital, where a physical check-up corrected their mistake about the child's sex, according to the paper.
Doctors concluded that he was suffering from a rare disease causing sexual organs to be somewhat hidden from view, and the boy was subsequently treated in a three-hour-long, successful operation, it said.