Hong Ying is known for her autobiographical work Daughter of the River.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"Later, I realized she was just trying to protect me so she kept a distance from me－the extra child in the family," she says. "But her apathy made me rebellious. I did everything she told me not to and I paid the price for it."

Hong Ying left home at a very young and later to learned writing at Lu Xun Academy in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai. She left the country for a stay in Britain in the 1990s and returned to in Beijing in 2000.

She records those years in her autobiographic works, Daughter of the River in 1997 and Good Children of the Flower in 2009, both of which are available in multiple languages.

Fellow author A Lai says, when the two novels were reprinted in April, he was astounded to read such a courageous and frank account of cruelty in the times of hunger and disasters that a generation of Chinese faced, but most other writers learned a "skillful way" to hide it.

It is her own daughter, Sybil, born in 2007, who gradually dispersed her childhood resentment and brought a new light into her life and writing, Hong Ying says.

"Sybil is like her father, warm, loving and brave, full of sunshine," she says. The daughter knows her past and the grandma's past through many bedtime stories.

"I don't want her to be possessed by fear, as I did. I'd like her to have the wisdom to control fear," she says.

Her husband, Adam Williams, thinks Hong Ying's books can be read by all age groups.

Mimidola was created, combining her daughter's positive, happy nature and Hong Ying's own wisdom and insights.

"And several Mimidola dialogues are from what Sybil said (earlier)," she says, with a smile.

"The heroine of Hong Ying's books is always the daughter," A Lai says. "The author has become a mother herself, so combining the two images, readers get a key to unlock all her emotional secrets."