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Early life

Born on 10 March 1924, in Haining, Zhejiang in Republican China, Cha was named Zha Liangyong and is the second of seven children. He hailed from the scholarly Zha clan of Haining (海寧查氏), whose members included notable literati of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties such as Zha Jizuo (1601–1676), Zha Shenxing (1650–1727) and Zha Siting (查嗣庭; died 1727). His grandfather, Zha Wenqing (查文清), obtained the position of a tong jinshi chushen (third class graduate) in the imperial examination during the Qing dynasty. His father, Zha Shuqing (查樞卿), was arrested and executed by the Communist government for allegedly being a counterrevolutionary during the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries in the early 1950s. Zha Shuqing was later posthumously declared innocent in the 1980s.

Zha Shuqing used to read him excerpts from the wuxia Huangjiang Nüxia (荒江女侠; "Woman Warrior of the Wild River") by Gu Mingdao (顧明道) every day, which aroused Cha's strong interest in the genre. Later, Cha took the initiative to read other works like Water Margin and The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, which laid the foundation of his future as a wuxia novelist.

In 1937, Cha studied at Jiaxing No. 1 Middle School. In 1938, the Japanese army invaded Zhejiang, and the Jiaxing Middle School had to move thousands of miles south to Lishui city in order to survive. Cha, as one of the students, only carried a quilt and a change of clothes, and the students had to trek on foot for 60 to 70 miles a day.

Cha was later expelled in 1941 after he wrote an article called "Alice's Adventures" which satirized the training director sent by the Kuomintang for being vicious towards the students. Cha later reflected on this period as one of the most significant crises in his life. The expulsion not only deprived him of the opportunity to pursue his studies but he suddenly faced the issue of finding food and accommodation. Fortunately, with assistance from the principal, Zhang Yintong, Cha resumed his high school education at Quzhou No. 1 Secondary School and graduated in 1943.