[3] Additionally, Xu felt that Beijing would offer a distinct visual perspective that would have been absent in other Chinese cities.

[3] In the winter of 1948 in Beijing, a renowned writer (Jiang Wen) receives a letter from an unknown woman on his birthday.

The woman, a Miss Jiang, tells of her first infatuation with the writer when she was in her early teens, when she was his neighbour at a siheyuan.

When she moved back to Beijing years later as a student at the Peking Women's College, she had a brief liaison with him, after which she became pregnant.

On the day after their son dies in an illness, she decides to write this letter to be posted after her death, to let him know of their existence.