Cai Tianxin was born in 1963 in Huangyan on the southeast coast of China. His father insisted he study sciences because he felt it was an occupation that couldn't be politically compromised. He is a professor of mathematics at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, and an author of many books of poetry, essays, travel writing and biography. His poems have been translated into thirteen languages. In an essay, titled Mathematicians and Poets he wrote, 'Mathematics is a true language, which not only records and expresses ideas and the process of thinking, but also creates itself (through its own poets and writers'.
