[4] The Crystal's founder, the businessman Yu Daxiong (余大雄), would regularly travel to the homes of novelists and essayists to request works; his conversations likewise provided material for publication.

[6] Many of its early literary contributors were Mandarin Duck and Butterfly writers, including Bao Tianxiao and Zhang Chunfan [zh].

[11] Likewise, in 1928 The Crystal and The Holmes (a legal-minded tabloid established in 1926) entered into a court case disputing a work's originality.

[3] As with other contemporary tabloids, The Crystal extensively reported rumours as well as salacious stories that had not entered the mainstream press.

One edition, published in the 1920s, covered a brothel visit by Hu Shih – a man who had received the sobriquet "the father of enlightenment".

In 1926, The Crystal was sued by a German doctor after it alleged that the plaintiff had not succeeded in improving the performance of Qing-era scholar Kang Youwei.

[10] The Crystal covered the courtesans of Shanghai extensively, including their relationships with each other, their involvement with local elites, the general state of the business, and the names and telephone numbers of brothels.

[18] Some articles decried the rise of Western-style girls' schools, inferred to be "hotbeds for female same-sex relations",[19] while others derogatively framed lesbians as members of the "mirror-rubbing gang" (磨镜觉).

[21] Stories published in The Crystal asserted that powerful figures, such as President Cao Kun and former Emperor Pu Yi, had become involved in same-sex relationships with younger men.

[9] The Crystal was described by Perry Link as the "premier example of the mosquito press" in Shanghai in his discussion of early twentieth-century Chinese fiction.

[25] Likewise, Kang describes its discussion of lesbian relationships as providing cultural conservatives with a means of venting "their anxieties over the reorganization of the gender order".