Voltaire's adaptation was also written as a response to the Manchu conquest of the Ming dynasty and the creation of the Manchu Qing dynasty. His version of the story changed the play's setting from the state of Jin during the Spring and Autumn period to a locale near the Great Wall coinciding with Mongol conquest of the Southern Song dynasty. He deliberately chose the Mongols as an analogue to the contemporaneous Manchus who ruled 18th-century China.