Zhang was born in
Wuyi County,
Zhili (now Hebei), on 16 October 1921. In 1935, he was accepted to the Mechanical Engineering Department of Higher Vocational School of Hebei Institute of Technology (now
Hebei University of Technology) in
Tianjin. In the summer of 1936, he dropped out of school and went south to Shanghai, and enrolled at Jiangsu Provincial Shanghai High School. In the autumn of 1937, the
Imperial Japanese Army occupied Shanghai. After refusing the solicitation of the
Kuomintang spy, he endured
malaria and applied for university in
Wuhan. He joined the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in March 1940. ==Honours and awards==