Child Zhu Yunming was home-educated under the guidance of his grandfather, retired minister of the Ministry of War and a skilled scholar-calligrapher. He enrolled in a public school at age 13, and passed imperial examination at provincial level at 33. He spent next twenty years preparing the examination at national level, the highest honor to which an individual could aspire; however, he failed each of 7 consecutive examinations. The frustrations got him down in the dumps, and he began to shift his interest from regular script, the standard style for the examination, to cursive script. This poem, written at age 51, expressed his anguish of the days.

Reading behind closed doors is one way to evade the spell of hot weather. I am trying to abstain from the bottle, and afraid that bending over my desk will disturb my leisurely mood. The wind blows tree leave from neighboring temple to my yard, and distant mountains peek through the clouds. People say that living in solitude is simple; actually it is difficult in practice.

Zhu was finally appointed a county's commissioner when he turned 55, and retired eight years later. Elderly Zhu made a living by selling his works of calligraphy. Soon after his death counterfeits of his handwriting flooded the market, making today's research complicated.