[1] Yan Xiu was born on 12 April 1860 into a salt merchant family in Tianjin during the Qing Dynasty.

He was a controversial figure whose reformist ideas made him an outcast of Beijing politics and earned him criticism from fellow scholar-officials.

Following the failure of his proposal and the Hundred Days' Reform, he was rejected from the scholarly circles by anti-reform court officials of the Qing government.

The wealth from the salt trade allowed Yan Xiu to continue his life as an educator, establishing a household school.

Zhang Boling was trained in Western knowledge, graduating in 1894[3] from the Beiyang Naval Academy in Tianjin, organized by Li Hongzhang.