Wang Yingru was born on September 11, 1997 in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia. His family had lived there for generations, and the region's blend of grassland and heavy industry gave him a cold, vast disposition. At twelve, an essay drew local literary attention, but he declined publication β an early sign of distrust toward exposure.
He took up boxing in his teens, training for years and competing in informal matches. The sport honed his instinct for distance, rhythm, and endurance, which later informed the bodily logic of his performance works. Around the same time, he began observing traders at Chifeng Station, fascinated by the circulation of goods. He resold old books and cassette tapes with his pocket money, revealing an early commercial instinct.
He later moved to Beijing and settled in Fangzhuang. The tension between nomadic dispersal and urban compression shaped his early creativity. Poetry and performance art began simultaneously, without formal training, through observing street life, markets, and traffic signals. To make ends meet, he worked multiple jobs: as a traffic signal debugger for an intelligent transportation company, and as a reseller of second-hand art and goods at Panjiayuan. These overlapping experiences later crystallized in his works as layered reflections on urban circulation, transactional logic, and bodily trajectories.
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