The disturbing image of a newborn baby girl drowning in a kitchen waste bucket has haunted London-based Chinese author Xue Xinran for more than 20 years.

In 1989, she was working on a story in the Shangdong province and was invited to dinner, where the family was awaiting the birth of a child. But there was no celebration. Instead, the family was disheartened by the newborn girl and the next thing Xue saw was the twitching tiny foot of an infant sticking out of a pail of dirty water.

Incensed and indignant, she was told to do nothing by her companions, because 'they do things differently in the countryside'.

This was a painful memory she kept buried but with her latest non-fiction book, Message From An Unknown Chinese Mother, she tells her own story about fostering an abandoned girl whom she had to give up because of the one- child policy, as well as the stories of Chinese mothers who have been forced to give up their daughters for adoption, or kill them.

'I never planned on writing this book because the subject matter was too close to my heart and too painful,' says the soft-spoken 52-year-old in fluent, accentless English over tea at the Goodwood Park Hotel.

But she wavered when many Chinese girls adopted into Western countries approached her at her book signings, asking: 'Xinran, do you know why my Chinese mother did not want me?'

Xue has written four other non- fiction books and one novel, Miss Chopsticks, which deals with the awkward relationships that the Chinese have with the cities they migrate to.

She tells LifeStyle her latest book, with 10 stories about abandoned female babies in China, was born out of the question posed by those adopted Chinese girls: 'I wanted to give them an answer and to let them know that they were very much loved by their birth mothers, who, many times, had no choice but to give them up for adoption because the alternative would be to kill them.'

The stories in her book are gleaned from her personal experience and her time as a radio presenter in Nanjing from 1989 to 1997. She hosted a popular radio programme, Words On The Night Breeze. Many women would write to her with their stories, many of which have already been documented in her first non-fiction book, The Good Women Of China, which was published in 2003.

Exuding a genteel grace, she was dressed perfectly in a cream top and black pants, but only one of her nails was painted red.

'When I was a journalist, I realised that if my lipstick was smudged, for example, women would approach me to let me know, and we would strike up a conversation and they would let me into their lives,' she explains.

'So up to today, I make it a point to be 'slightly imperfect'.'

Xue wrote Message From An Unknown Chinese Mother over six weeks in Sydney, Australia. She remained in the city after a book tour because she needed to be away from home to work on the book.

'It was far too painful. I needed to detach myself, if I wrote it at home, I would not be able to go back. And once I started, I could not stop. I was writing up to 14 hours a day,' she says.

Halfway through the interview, she struggles to hold back tears. 'You know, I still wake up from nightmares about these girls, it is so difficult,' she says before her voice trails off into silence.

Writing this book was also a way of coming to terms with her parents, who left her with her grandmother to dedicate themselves to the Cultural Revolution.

'My mother never hugged me or celebrated my birthday with me. I never felt like a real daughter,' she says with a sad smile.

She hopes that many more in China will come to know and understand the plight of these 'lost' girls but she knows that will be difficult. None of her books has been published in China.

'Many people have criticised me, saying, wo diu zhong guo de lian (I have shamed China),' she says.

'But what I write is the truth and we cannot progress unless we are ready to face up to our past.'

The mood lifts only when Xue, who is married to a British literary agent, talks about her 21-year-old son, Pan Pan, an undergraduate at the Imperial College in London.

'He is my best friend and power station, and such a wonderful boy, though we do have our debates and differences,' she says.

She adds with a fake grimace: 'His English is so much better than his Chinese now, it is such a shame.'

songyuan@sph.com.sg

This article was first published in The Sunday Times.