Cao Yu was born in Wan Jia, an old feudal bureaucratic family, and he often contacted the elites of society. When Cao Yu was a child, he frequented these bureaucratic comprador families and had the opportunity to get in touch with and understand the characters and lives described in Thunderstorm, Sunrise and Peking Man. Cao Yu, who grew up in a decadent old society and a quiet family environment, hated family and society, and his heart was full of "thunderstorms" eager for social change. It is hatred for exploiters, oppressors and their vassals, and sympathy and love for the oppressed and trampled; It was the denial of old China and the yearning for new China that prompted him to start writing plays such as Thunderstorm and Sunrise.
From the outbreak of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression to the eve of the birth of New China, with the changes of the national democratic revolution, Cao Yu's thought and creation also experienced ups and downs. Metamorphosis and Peking Man were both written at that time.
However, after writing home, Cao Yu was forced to give up his drama creation painfully for a long time. This is because he could not answer many complicated questions in real life, and fell into extreme pain and contradiction, which made the complicated situation more acute after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, and finally forced him to stop writing. It was not until after liberation that I regained my creative enthusiasm.