Bian was born in Haimen, Jiangsu on December 8, 1910, and liked to read classical and modern Chinese poems when he was very young.

The poetry anthology The Han Garden Collection (《汉园集》) co-written by Bian, Li Guangtian and He Qifang, was published in 1936.

Bian's poems were related to the Crescent School (新月派) which advocated modern metrical poetry, but his style was closer to the Chinese symbolists.

Bian's poems of this time represented his dissatisfaction and thinking of the social reality as a young intellectual, showed his quick perception, and sometimes hard to understand.

From 1964, he served as a researcher of the Institute of Foreign Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (中国社会科学院外国文学研究所).