AT OUR first meal at a fast-food outlet in Hainan, our driver Lao Wang muttered disapprovingly over the you tiao (dough fritters), xiao longbao (dumplings), chongyou bing (pancakes) and dou jiang (soya bean drink) my colleague Hui Fen and I had ordered for breakfast.
Over the next five days, the 50-something Lao Wang would remind us constantly that we ate too much, talked too much and laughed too loudly.
Nothing we did seemed to meet with his approval. In his opinion, we obviously did not behave as women should.
The fact that two women half his age were telling him what to do and paying him to drive them around probably also rankled.
He was not the only one. As we went from one village to another in this southern Chinese province, Hui Fen and I were told - more than once - that women cannot gan da shi or achieve anything big.
We had to constantly bite our tongues and refrain from reacting indignantly.
Lao Wang's snarky remarks also made plain that he thought we were just two silly women trying to understand what was accepted as fact in Hainan - that sons are better than daughters.
Asking villagers if they prefer boys to girls was like asking them if the sun rose in the east.
Before I had set out for Hainan, I had read about the rampant abortion and abandonment of baby girls, and could not believe Hainanese mothers could be so heartless.
They should be shamed in public, I thought. But a week among these people left me ashamed I had been too quick to judge.
Hui Fen and I realised a woman's lot is far from easy in these parts. Women are under such immense social pressure to bear a son, it is nothing short of tragic.
Imagine being singled out and ridiculed for not having a son. Imagine being mocked for 'not knowing how to give birth' because your newborn is a girl.
These were not mothers who ill-treated their daughters. Those we met loved their girls and tried to do their best for them too.
But until they had a son, there was no let-up in the pressure they endured.
I hoped younger Hainanese would be different, and more willing to discard their ingrained notions about boys and girls.
Then I met father-to-be Huang Ganliang. The 20-year-old farmer said married daughters are like spilt water - valueless. It came as no surprise when he then declared he wanted his firstborn to be a boy.
The preference for male children ran deep, and both boys and girls are raised to believe sons are better than daughters.
When we learnt that daughters are so disregarded, they are not even included on the list of children's names on their parents' tombstones, Hui Fen said: 'It's like daughters don't exist there.'
She also felt immense sadness when we visited a maternity ward.
A young woman was utterly joyless when she spoke of her week-old daughter, her first child.
That sombre scene unnerved Hui Fen, who is married with a 20-month-old son. It made her recall how she had faced no pressure when she was pregnant.
Her mother-in-law, who has five daughters and two sons, had told her: 'Boy or girl also okay.'
In fact, Hui Fen remembered how she had openly longed for a girl, because she felt daughters stay closer to their mothers.
'Once sons find girlfriends or wives, their mothers take a back seat,' she said.
But even though there had been no pressure at home, she had been surprised after her baby arrived to find strangers telling her she had been 'so clever' to have given birth to a son.
It made us wonder if the gender preference was much different in Singapore.
Three out of four gynaecologists I spoke to on my return home said they see more couples who prefer sons over daughters. The reasons vary, but most just want to please their parents or in-laws.
This preference for boys used to be much more pronounced 20 or 30 years ago, the doctors said.
Thomson Medical Centre consultant Dr Cheng Li Chang said he had heard of desperate Singapore couples who go to neighbouring countries to undergo what is essentially a sex selection procedure to have a male baby.
Such procedures are not allowed in Singapore, he said.
A good friend of mine, who has a young daughter, moans that at family gatherings she is always asked the same question: 'When are you going to have a son?'
Coming home also made me feel glad and relieved to have been born a girl in Singapore, where daughters are precious and valued.
I think sometimes of Lao Wang muttering away at Hui Fen and me during our Hainan meal times. And I know, at the very least, I can eat what I like, speak as much as I like, and laugh as loudly as I like.
