[1] His grandfather Zheng Guanying was a reformist active in the late Qing dynasty.
[2] After university in 1962, he did his postgraduate work at the Institute of Foreign Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences under Li Jianwu.
[3] In 1969, he was sent to the May Seventh Cadre Schools to do farm works in Xi County, Henan.
[2] In 1979, he completed and published his first literary translation Longevity Potion (written by Honoré de Balzac) in World Literature magazine.
[2] Then he translated several pieces of Honoré de Balzac's works successively.