According to the Wu Family Chart of Yimen, wu Zhen's ancestor was king Wu of the Zhou Dynasty. His grandfather Wu Ze, styled Bochang, was an anti-Jin Jian general in the Song Dynasty. Father Wu He, the word jun home, number is heart; Uncle Wu Sen, who went up to be a best friend with Zhao Meng ð ¯, was a very rich man and went by the name of Wu When wu Zhen was young, he was fond of making friends with chivalrous figures and learned martial arts and fencing. Later, he and his elder brother Wu Yuanzhang went to Piling (now Wujin County, Jiangsu Province) to study liu Tianji and studied the art of heaven's command and human's understanding. He once taught in private school, went to Jiaxing and other places to sell divination, "history painter surname summary" said Wu Zhen "village teaching to amuse themselves, participate in yi divination to play the world". In his youth, Wu Zhen was very different from the other three members of the Four Yuan families in his official career: Huang Gongwang was keen on fame in his early years and made friends with many literati and officials. After being frustrated, he focused on painting. Wang Meng also went for a long career in public office in his youth, and through his special relations with Zhao Meng ð« ¯, Zhao Yong and Zhao Lin, he made many high profile friends Ni Zan is one of the three richest people in Wu, although he is not good at financial management, but because of his family's solid wealth and rich collection, also created many conditions for him to make friends with literati.
According to volume 3 of The Collection of Cangluo, "wu Zhen is a man of resistance to simplicity and gujie, with a high self-standard table and a Taoist name of plum blossom. If you take a painting from him, you can't take it away from him, but if you cast it with a good pen and paper, you can get it if you want." Wu Zhen's paintings are mostly self-painted and self-titled, and few literati at that time inscribed poems for him. The four yuan families had contacts with other three families, but wu Zhen and Wang Meng's poems proved that they were good friends, but wu and Huang Ni did not have sufficient evidence to prove that they had established friendship, although huang and Ni both spoke highly of Wu Zhen's painting art at that time.
