[2] Shuhua was the daughter of the third concubine of a high ranking Qing official, Ling Fupeng, from the southern province of Canton, who later served as the mayor of Beijing.

[6] In 1922, Ling Shuhua enrolled Yenching (Yanjing) University in Beijing, studied French, English and Japanese.

At the time, Chen Yuan was an English professor at Peking University, an influential literary critic, and also an editor for magazines.

Through Chen Yuan, Ling shuhua got to know many famous writers of the time, such as Shen Congwen.

[8] While at Wuhan University, Ling met Julian Bell in 1935 when he was temporarily an English teacher in China.

Ling dedicated this work to Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, whom she met in England in the 1940s.

[14] Ling Shuhua has many famous short stories: The Temple of Flowers, Women, Little Brothers and her collection of essays Love Mountain Dream.

She was no ordinary writer, and was known abroad as "speaking with clipped tongue," as she used her "special writing style" in her English work.

Under the social atmosphere at that time, most women were dominated by patriarchy in the process of growing up, and they needed to obey their fathers' decisions.

Nevertheless, she did not give up the classical culture she had studied for many years by the use of vernacular Chinese in her literary work, which is evident in her story White Birch.

A classical Chinese atmosphere is present in this book, but even such excellent works will be personified and feminized because the author is a woman.

[20] Vita Sackville-West, who wrote the introduction for Ling's Ancient Melodies, recommended the book for its "Arabian Nights quality".

[18] In her time, Shuhua was called a writer of the "xin guixiu pai" (the New Boudoir School), suggesting she was conservative in her choice of subject matter and less defiant in her criticism of tradition.

[21] Boudoir poetry was considered a "feminine" genre, yet its use was perceived "ancient", puerile and shallow by the new generation of intellectuals.

[16] Moreover, by exposing and criticizing the oppression of men's power implied in her works, she broke the contract that bound women, which was transformed into the subversion of men's power, and also defended the unfair treatment and status of women in the society at that time.

[22] Even though Ling Shuhua was considered a May Fourth writer, her liking of traditional Chinese arts made her identity "ambivalent".

He desires to be demonstrative and to display affection, but is refrained by Chinese customs, which would not be otherwise if he were American or European, as he thought so.

His foster sister passes away, he is filled with regrets for not seeing her then quarrels with his wife who claims that it is no good to see death on a festive day.