It was set in Chongqing during the Chinese Civil War in 1949, and featured underground communist agents under the command of Zhou Enlai fighting an espionage battle against the Kuomintang.

Xujun Eberlein wrote in The Atlantic that "The novel played a critical role in the heroism culture of the Mao era.

[4][5][6][7] The opera was composed by Yang Ming and Jiang Chunyang,[8] musicians of the art bureau of the Chinese Air Force.

[9][10] In 1965, a feature film adaptation directed by Shui Hua was released; titled Eternity in Flames (烈火中永生), it starred Yu Lan and Zhao Dan.

[11] In 2002, at the invitation of the German World Art Festival, director Zhang Yuan presented a Peking opera (also titled Sister Jiang), with Zhang Huoding in the title role, at the Cologne Grand Theater - the first major presentation of a revolutionary opera in Europe.