Zhang was born 6 May 1929 in
Shanghai, Republic of China. He studied in
Christian missionary schools as a child and entered
St. John's University, Shanghai in 1948. He transferred to
Yenching University in
Beijing in 1950, graduating in July 1952 with a degree in history. He taught at Liancheng Secondary School (连成中学), an affiliated school of
Tsinghua University, for the next four years. He served as vice director of the Institute of Archaeology from July 1985 to May 1988. He retired in May 1989, but continued to publish for decades afterwards. He died on 30 January 2020 at Tiantan Hospital in Beijing, aged 90. ==Contributions==