He also wrote Huaying ci 花影詞 (Poems of Flower Shadows), Xinang cunjin 奚囊寸錦, and Yin zhong baxian ling 飲中八仙令.
One year before he was born, his father Zhang Xikong became a jinshi and went to work in Shandong as an educational inspector.
[citation needed] In 1936, Zhang Yiping, a litterateur, managed to purchase a manuscript of Shadows of Sweet Dreams, which was read by Lin Yutang, who thought highly of it.
[7][better source needed] Lin Yutang classified the content into six parts: human life, personal character, women and friends, nature, the house and home, reading and literature.
[8] The book reflected Zhang Chao's sympathies with the Ming dynasty, and in style was highly reminiscent of Ming-era literature.
[citation needed] The historian Ban Gu classified texts associated with Yu Chu under the umbrella term "minor discourses" (xiaoshuo).
The editors of the Siku Quanshu regarded the appearance of New Tales of Yu Chu as marking the popularity of weird fiction.
[9] He kept close contact with a number of famous textual criticism scholars of his day, such as Zhang Erqi [zh] and Yan Ruoqu.