Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Zhou Zuoren was educated at the Jiangnan Naval Academy as a teenager before moving to Japan in 1906, following his brother's footsteps.

[2] In the article, he attacked specifically such thematics in literature as children sacrificing themselves for the sake of their parents and wives being buried alive to accompany dead husbands.

In January 1949, shortly before the liberation, the Nationalist Party Government with the temporary President Li Zongren decided to release some people under detention.

However, during the Cultural Revolution, the People's Literature Publishing House no longer paid royalty to Zhou Zuoren, which used to be his sole source of income.

[1] During the first decades of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Zuoren's writings were not widely available to readers due to his alleged treason.

[6] He later became a translator, producing translations of classical Greek and classical Japanese literatures, including a collection of Greek mimes, Sappho's lyrics, Euripides' tragedies, Kojiki, Shikitei Sanba's Ukiyoburo, Sei Shōnagon's Makura no Sōshi and a collection of Kyogen.

During the 1930s he was also a regular contributor to Lin Yutang's humor magazine The Analects Fortnightly and wrote extensively about China's traditions of humor, satire, parody, and joking, even compiling a collection of Jokes from the Bitter Tea Studio (Kucha'an xiaohua ji).

In his early work, Zhou Zuoren denied the legitimacy of violence as a force for modernizing China, but rather sought social change and intellectual engagement through nonviolence.