Born in Shiniu River, a tributary of Taohua River in Hunan. He was known as Xinyuan, Shiniu Laomu, Wanderer of Taojiang. His passion for art developed from his early childhood. He eventually studied Chinese paintings in the Nanjing Art School in 1946 and followed Huang Chun-Pi in Landscape paintings. After his relocation to Taiwan in 1949, he studied Landscape paintings of the Northern Song school with Pu Hsin-Yu and established Lishui Studio with Yu Chung-Lin and Sun Jia-Qin. He taught at the National Taiwan Normal University, the National Taiwan University of Arts and the Taipei National University of the Arts.