Her short stories have attracted critical acclaim from the outset, beginning with her early Chinese Galaxy Award recipient "Guan Yaojing de Pingzi" 关妖精的瓶子 (April 2004 Science Fiction World trans Linda Rui Feng as "The Demon-Enslaving Flask" November 2012 Renditions).

A work of fabulation, in which the scientist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) is offered a Faustian challenge by a literal demon, its selection was attended by a spat among critics as to whether it could be called science fiction at all.

The story is mired so deeply in anecdotes from the history of science, and literal interpretations of famous thought experiments, that it requires copious footnotes to explain its own jokes.

This, however, seems very much in keeping with the classical, didactic tradition in Chinese science fiction, creating a story whose fantasy elements are mere vectors to convey information about the life and work of icon figures such as Archimedes, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger and Maxwell himself.

"Bai Gui Ye Xing Jie" 百鬼夜行街 (August 2010 Science Fiction World trans Ken Liu as "A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight" February 2012 Clarkesworld Magazine) is far subtler and more mature, a child's eye view of life inside what first appears to be a haunted Keep redolent of Chinese ghost stories, but is gradually revealed as a run-down Far Future theme park populated with Cyborg simulacra.