Mai Cheng (a pseudonym for Wang Qiang) was born in 1962 into a military family in the northen Chinese city of Shenyang. He also joined the army, and began to write poetry while still in uniform. In 1985, he met Gu Cheng (1956–1993), the well-known "Misty" poet who was later to commit suicide while in exile in New Zealand. Gu Cheng’s work was to have a decisive influence on his poetic development, and Mai Cheng is now one of the core "Third-Generation Poets" who have risen to prominence in the wake of the "Misty" school. He lives in the north-eastern coastal city of Dalian where, faced with a modern, commercialised China, he says he feels himself to be a "spiritual orphan", although one for whom poetry is "the place to which I escape" and "the ultimate meaning of which is to make me a better man".