KEY POINTS:
Walking in the door of a Shanghai primary school with a fair-haired toddler was novel enough, but I had two in tow - an urban extravagance only the very wealthy, foreigners, or the stupidly brave could afford.
For some Chinese city-dwellers, bucking the strict one-child policy means withstanding
immense pressure. A friend once described how the second pregnancy of a colleague was greeted by an announcement that all staff in her factory would be docked 10 per cent of their pay should she take the pregnancy to term.
So in 2001, just bowling up with two children turned heads. Many curious onlookers asked if both kids were mine. Within a minute my children were surrounded like pint-sized celebrities, something they were quickly getting used to by just walking down the street. People would ask to pose with them for pictures, or reach to touch the novel curls of my daughter's hair.
When school adjourned, a mother who spoke excellent English kindly invited us to her home for tea. A half-dozen parents joined us. She translated their questions about schools, children, and my impressions of their country.
What stands out most in my memory was their reaction to one of my questions, "How do you feel about American families adopting so many Chinese baby girls?" The entire group went quiet, baffled.
My host asked me to repeat the question, fearing she had not translated correctly. The women's faces remained blank. "We've never heard of such a thing," one ventured.
I explained, "I have many friends who have adopted Chinese girls. Thousands have come to America." All faces turned in my direction, disbelieving.
What China has by the thousands - and what American childless couples are willing to pay much-needed foreign currency for - are abandoned baby girls. Today, 55,000 children have left China to be adopted by American parents since 1992. New Zealand receives only a trickle of that number, 72 since 1999.
Adopted girls are the lucky ones, but they are just a small piece of a daunting bigger picture reconfiguring the entire face of Asia.
China is killing its females in unprecedented numbers. Mass female infanticide accounts for up to 100 million Asian women aborted as foetuses or murdered in infancy, according to Will Hutton in the Observer.
What is this new killing catalyst introduced just two decades ago? Portable ultrasound. A technician will signal a smile for a boy, or frown for a girl, if enough money changes hands.
This story isn't new, but what is surprising is the flip side to this lopsided equation. By 2020, China will have an astounding surplus of 28 million men, India 31 million, creating a so-called "army of bachelors".
What does that look like today? China already has 119 men for every 100 women. In some rural areas, where boys inherit the land and are valued for farm work, that number is as high as 140 men to 100 women.
As a result, poor women are now choosing to marry further up the social scale, leaving an ever-growing population of the very poorest men unanchored by a wife or family. Their poverty and transience is most likely to drive them to cities, contributing to spiking crime rates. "In India and China, there is a near complete correlation between the growth of violent crime and those cities and provinces where the sex ratio is worst." Hutton said, "Shanghai or Guangzhou report 90 per cent of crime from unmarried migrant men."
Hutton sketched in a possible future by looking back into China's past. Around 1850, a network of 50,000 bandits raped and pillaged central China for more than 15 years.
These transient Nian rebels were men without women, long understood to be the stimulus for their violence. They originated in a famine-stricken district where infant girls were killed to conserve food for more economically valuable boys.
"The inability of the Imperial armies to quell the rebellion for so long was a sign of the system's vulnerability that would eventually lead to its collapse." Hutton said.
"Most Chinese regimes in history, as the communists know, have been toppled from below. Western commentators like to project China and India as economic giants effortlessly on the move. But societies that are so dysfunctional rarely sustain rapid growth or stable government for long. There will be change. The questions are how and when."
When I left my hostess that afternoon, several women made a comment I had heard many times while in China, still strange to my ears. "Aren't you lucky to have had a boy", they remarked, assuming I had tried for a second child because the first was a girl.
It was a question I knew I couldn't begin to answer, but one the Chinese Government must now vitally try to address; how to value a daughter.
