[1] His 1999 novel, National Portrait (國畫), about municipal-level corruption in China became a sensation, spawning a craze in the genre.
[5] Before becoming a full-time writer, Wang was a municipal and country-level civil servant in west Hunan, serving in the Xupu country government from 1984 to 1992.
[3] He transferred to Changsha around 1994 and later worked in the Hunan provincial government when he began writing in earnest in the late 1990s.
The novel was endorsed by Wang Qishan, Vice President of the People's Republic of China, and adapted into a play in 2017.
[6][7] A TV adaptation of the novel written by Wang and directed by Zheng Xiaolong is currently in production.