Career
He started publishing poems at the age of fifteen under his current name. Subsequently, he joined the People"s Liberation Army in 1947, but was labeled a "rightist" in 1957. He worked in a Shanghai film studio in the early 1960s, and produced several influential dramas and films in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
(as a participant of the Democratic movement of 1979): "Comrade poets, we would rather sing the praises of a brick in the democratic wall.
Never should we again sing the praises of any savior".