Wang was born into a poor Manchu family in Beijing. He worked as an editor for a newspaper agency and as a clerk for a merchant association before becoming a writer. He lived through the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Cultural Revolution and began writing novels in the 1930s. Most of Wang's early works were of the detective and mystery fiction genres.

He started writing Wuxia novels after moving to Qingdao. Between 1938 and 1949, Wang wrote 16 Wuxia novels. In 1949, Wang stopped writing and became a school teacher after the Chinese Civil War ended. He was sentenced to farm labour during the Cultural Revolution and died from illness in 1975 towards the end of the revolution. At the time of his death, Wang had written a total of 30 novels. Wang was married to Li Danquan and they had more than three children.

Li Danquan met film director Ang Lee during the filming of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (an adaptation of one of Wang's works) in 1999.

Wang is best known for his Wuxia-romance novels, which usually have tragic endings, as well as his social-romance novels. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of the modern genre of Wuxia, along with other established Wuxia writers such as Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng. Within the genre, Wang had secured his place as one of the "Ten Great Writers" and one of the "Four Great Writers of the Northern School", along with Li Shoumin, Gong Baiyu and Zheng Zhengyin.

Zhang Gansheng, a scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, has characterized Wang as perfecting the Wuxia genre, and paving the way for a generation of great writers. However, according to Xu Sinian, another scholar, there has not been any detailed critique of Wang's works, apart from that of the Taiwanese scholar Ye Hongsheng.

The Crane-Iron Series

Wang is remembered for his five-part epic Wuxia-romance series, often called collectively the Crane-Iron Series (????), named after the first characters in the titles of the first and last installments in the series. The stories chronicle the struggles of four generations of Youxias. These are the titles under which they are now published, in order of their internal chronology (that is, not in the order they were originally composed or published):

1. Crane Frightens Kunlun (????)
2. Precious Sword, Golden Hairpin (????)
3. Sword's Force, Pearl's Shine (????)
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (????)
5. Iron Knight, Silver Vase (????)

The first book of the series, Crane Startles Kunlun, was written third, after Sword Spirit, Pearl Light, and serialized under the title Dancing Crane, Singing Luan (?????).

Ang Lee's 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, includes episodes and information from some of the other books in the series, apart from the novel which shares the same title as the film. The official website of actress Michelle Yeoh, who starred in the film, has an English-language summary of the five books.

As of 2009, no official English language translations of his novels exist. However, there is a Manhua series of the same name, (now in its second, revised edition) created by Andy Seto. They depart substantially from the written text.

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