In 1960, Lin published the collection of stories Memories of Peking: South Side Stories and established her name in Taiwan's literary circle. Based on five sequential stories of a Taiwanese family living in Peking in the 1920s, the collection portrays the adult world through the keen eyes and innocent mind of a little girl, Ying-tzu. The sense of loss and bewilderment, which arouses the child's awareness of the uncertainties of human relationships, even of life itself, and which finally catapults the child away from childhood joys into the sorrows of the adult world, is handled with great sensitivity and lyricism. Memories of Peking: South Side Stories became an immediate success and was eventually adapted into a movie by the Shanghai Film Studio in 1982.

Translated by: Nancy Ing, Pang-Yuan Chi