This painting features many signature elements of Hung Liu’s style: painterly brushwork, dripping paint, multiple canvases, and attention to the figure within direct or implied narratives. This diptych is part of the artist’s “Daughters of China” series that depicts the events in which eight female soldiers fought the Japanese and died in 1938. On the left is a rendering of a still from a propaganda film about these soldiers that Liu remembers seeing as a child. On the right, she depicts the Asian citrus fruit known as “Buddha’s hand,” which is offered during the Chinese New Year to represent happiness, longevity, and good fortune.

Hung Liu was born in China in 1948, a year before Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong came to power and created the People's Republic of China (PRC). Therefore, her sense of the world was forged by modern China’s historical events—overlaid by her time in the United States, beginning with her emigration in 1984 to study art at University of California, San Diego, where she received her MFA. She continues to live and work in California—currently in the Bay Area, where she is professor emerita at Mills College.