Liu Xinwu was born in 1942 in Chengdu, the capital city of Southwest China's Sichuan Province. His family moved to Beijing when he was 8, and he has been living in the Chinese capital since then.

Liu graduated from the Beijing Normal University in 1961, and afterwards taught in a middle school for 15 years. In 1976 he quit teaching and became an editor for the Beijing Publishing House.

In November 1977, Liu published his signal work, Class Counselor. In the story, a young girl fails to achieve a reconciliation with her mother, whom she had been forced to denounce during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). An open-minded class advisor recognizes that there is still hope for the generation of youth who suffered at the hands of the "gang of four."

Class Counselor heralded the literary thaw of the 1980s, and secured Liu's status in contemporary Chinese literature. Later he published a number of other works including The Position of Love, Wake up, Younger Brother and I Love Every Green Leaf.

Liu began to publish essays on the studies of A Dream of Red Mansions in 1993. Later these study results were published in the forms of novels and monographs.

(China Daily April 4, 2006)