Fonda Lee describes herself as a fan of action movies and gangster sagas; in preparation for the novel, she revisited both historical depictions of crime syndicates and other fiction drawing on these organizations:

For Jade City, I read nonfiction and watched documentaries about the Sicilian and Italian-American mafia and the Chinese triads and the Japanese yakuza. I watched American gangster movies and Hong Kong crime dramas and yakuza films and kung fu flicks and karambit knife-fighting tutorials on YouTube. I read nearly everything written by Mario Puzo (506).

The influence of films is apparent in Jade City, which features extensive action scenes that replicate the cinematography and choreography of on-screen street combat, and dramatic face-offs between powerful heads of families that draw on similar tense exchanges in fiction about real-world organized crime. Some reviewers compare Jade City to director Francis Ford Coppola’s film trilogy adaptation of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Aspects of Kekon like the strict division of responsibility within clan leadership, the honor culture that drives the tradition of the death of consequence and the exile of Anden, and the supernatural powers jade bestows clearly draw on similar conceits in the wuxia martial arts

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