[4] Baishan was the Minister of Propaganda in Shanghai when he was arrested for his association with Hu Feng, a literary critic and politician.

This family tragedy had a major influence on Xiaolian, who vividly depicts the terrifying memories in the 1987 novella "On My Back",[6] the 1997 short story "To That Faraway Place",[7] and in the 2009 documentary Storm under the Sun that she co-directed with Louisa Wei.

Although she spent nine years in the countryside of Jiangxi province,[4] not many works of hers except for "Burning Connections" write about the experience.

[12] After returning to China in 1996, Peng co-wrote (with Guo Lingling) the script for Huang Shuqin's film My Daddy.

Shanghai Story (2004), which explores the vicissitudes of life of a bourgeois family from the 1920s to the 1990s, won four Golden Rooster Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture.

[4][2] Shanghai Rumba (2006) is based on the romance of the famous movie star couple Zhao Dan and Huang Zongying.

[1] In 2009, Peng co-directed (with Louisa Wei) the documentary Storm Under the Sun, an investigation of the Hu Feng affair which had implicated her father.

[17] She began writing a book about her father titled Four Seasons of Childhood, and planned to make it into a film.