[1] Liu was born in Shanghai, on 2 March 1930, to Liu Qianchu (刘谦初), a communist who was killed by the Kuomintang on 5 April 1931, and Zhang Wenqiu [zh], a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

When they passed Xinjiang, they were detained by warlord Sheng Shicai and spent eight years in prison.

[1] In November 1950, Mao Anying died in an air raid by the U.S.-ROK coalition forces in the Korean War.

[1] In 1957, she returned to China and studied Russian language and literature at Peking University.

In early 1962, she remarried to Yang Maozhi (杨茂之), a faculty member of the PLA Air Force Academy (now PLA Air Force Command College [zh]).