After 1997, more and more children figures appear in Duan Jianwei’s oeuvre and they become the signature of his work. Apart from other artists who usually emphasize on the childishness, Duan utilizes the pureness of child as a vehicle to express his own emotions and nostalgic and magic feeling about childhood. Duan’s work is strongly influenced by the Renaissance paintings and the figures in his work evoke a sense of eternalness and loneliness. To certain extent, his figures have become an abstraction of social strata and a symbolization of an ideal type.

In Little Girl, there is a strong solitary and melancholic sentiment to the protagonist. Setting against a blackboard-like thick gray background with ambiguous vista in a distance, the central figure is flattened to the surface like a postcard image yet she is voluminous and calling for immediate attention. The contrast of adult facial expression and the petite physique results in a strong shock effect. Duan expresses his complicated feeling about childhood memory in this painting.