Zhejiang, China - When Pingping went to the hospital because of an injury of her ankle she had no idea that they would discover something that would change her life forever.

It was only by chance that the doctor found out that Pingping was not female as she had assumed her entire life. The 25-year-old was born a man and is considered intersex, as the South China Morning Post reported.

The young woman was taken aback and couldn't believe her ears. For the past year she and her boyfriend had tried to get pregnant – but without success.

The hospital now blames the lack of compulsory sexual education in Chinese's schools for the late discovery of her biological sex.

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Thanks to an X-ray, the doctor was able to find out that Pingping was born a male, her bones had not developed past the age of adolescence and she never menstruated.

What a shock! For the past 25 years, the young woman had no reason to suspect that there was something wrong because she had external female genitalia.

"When I was young my mum took me to the doctor. The doctor said I was just developing slower than others sexually, and that I could have my period in a few years," Pingping recalled. "After I grew up, I found this issue quite embarrassing so I didn't treat it seriously."

The Chinese woman was told she had neither a uterus nor ovaries, but also lacked male genitalia or an Adam's apple.

"We didn't find hidden testes in her body, either. Maybe that's because she's old enough and it has degenerated and atrophied," the endocrinologist Doctor Dong Fengqin said.

A genetic test revealed that her karyotype was 46,XY, which is typically found in males with genitalia that is not clearly male nor female.

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"[The parents] should have gone for check-ups years ago," the endocrinologist said. "This shows how seriously they lacked sexual knowledge."

The most important thing for Pingping now was to reestablish her gender identity.

Doctors suspected that the 25-year-old's sexual development disorder was caused by congenital adrenal hyperplasia. It's possible that this is linked to Pingping's parents' being closely related.