He obtained the xiucai degree in 1720, but when people in Anhui criticized him for wasting his family fortune, he moved to Nanjing.

Poverty-stricken by the age of thirty-two, he met and acquainted himself with many government officials but renounced ambition and did not attempt the exams.

One report had it that he could not afford to buy fuel, and when the nights were cold, he and his friends would walk together outside the city walls, chatting and composing poetry, a tactic they called 暖足 ("warming our feet").

[1] Wu's family may have had ties to the famous philosophers Yan Yuan and Li Gong (李塨).

The philosophers emphasized the importance of ritual in Neo-Confucianism and may have influenced Wu's novel.