Zeming Zhang was born in Guangzhou in 1951 and grew up in the Pearl River Film Studio. His formal education was halted in 1966 by the Cultural Revolution and in 1968 he was sent to work on a rubber plantation in Hainan Island. He returned to the studio in 1978, working as a production assistant and on continuity, his ambition to direct. In his spare time he wrote his own screenplays and studied Chinese literature with the Guangdong TV University. The studio was impressed by his script Swan Song