
Born in Chongqing, China in 1955, Xu grew up in Beijing where he studied printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Trained as a printmaker, Xu is informed by the Cultural Revolution, Chan Buddhism, and his keen interest in the relationship between meaning and words, writing, and reading. He has famously re-invented Chinese characters and the English alphabet, rendering Chinese nonsensical and English into legible Chinese characters, effectively challenging comprehension of both.