Too poor to attend the local academy, Wu determined to promote universal free education,[3] supposedly because he was swindled for his illiteracy.
Eventually he achieved success as a businessman, but he continued to beg, using the money he got to fund the foundation of local academies in Shandong.
In the last decade of his life, Wu was a successful money lender and landlord, and he used his earnings to found three charity traditional academies.
[2] Wu's life and work was promoted as exemplary by many leading figures in the imperial court of the Qing dynasty.
Red Guards exhumed his corpse and carried it to a public square where it was subsequently given a trial and ordered burned.