[2] Written immediately after the Boxer Rebellion, it was Li Baojia's first major literary work, serialized in the Shanghai Shijie Fanhua Bao.
[3] Li Baojia said that he chose the tanci form because it would be easy for the common people including women and children to understand the song and make them remember the incident it was named after.
[4] The work portrays the Boxers as being foolish and fraudulent, and it portrays the officials who supported the Boxers as being crooked.
That viewpoint is considered politically incorrect in China as of 2010.
Wilt L. Idema wrote in the article "Prosimetric and verse narrative" within The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature: From 1375, that because of the portrayal of the Boxers and their supporters, Gengzi Guobian Tanci "is neglected by modern scholars".