She cut the book from 1,200 to 760 pages to make it read more tightly. The success of Life and Death in Shanghai on The New York Times bestseller list indicates the degree to which Westerners were moved by it, but judging from the curiosity displayed by Western reporters toward her sufferings from torture, their experience of the book would seem somewhat different from the Chinese reader's.
尤其，並無寫作經驗的鄭念，前後共花了二年時間寫了五遍：前三遍整理思緒，第四遍校訂文法，第五遍刪節。她由一千二百多頁刪至七百六十頁，亦使全書更為緊湊。