The original impetus that sparked this story was a newspaper article she had read years earlier about a strange incident in which a woman in Shanghai was killed by a local hoodlum.
王安憶說起故事的來源：很多年前，她看過一則報導，說是上海發生一件很古怪的事情，一位當年的上海小姐被一個小流氓殺死了。