Xie often mounted related poems together, even when they were written on different sheets of paper; in this instance, four poems appear on three sheets. When Xie mounted them onto a larger sheet, he added a fifth poem, dated September 1990, at right. The adjacent poem, dated January 1990, probably began the sequence and suggests they were all composed within that time frame. Xie made a number of changes to his manuscripts, including crossing out one poem entirely.
