Chung Chao-cheng was born in 1925 in Longtan Township, Taoyuan. After finishing common school, he passed the entrance exam and began studying at Tamsui Middle School. His passion for reading began in childhood, and he developed a profound interest in literary books. However, while in middle school, he began to comprehend the unfair treatment against Taiwanese people under the colonial system.

After graduating from Tamsui Middle School, Chung Chao-cheng attended Chunghua Normal School and briefly worked as a substitute teacher in Daxi. During the war, he enlisted as an apprentice soldier and contracted malaria, which resulted in his hearing impairment and suffering from hearing difficulties later on. After the Second World War, he began to study in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at National Taiwan University but had to drop out because of his hearing impairment. The psychological scars from his wartime experiences and his depressed adolescence would later become the subjects for his literary works.

After the Second World War, Chung Chao-cheng settled in Longtan and worked as a teacher at Longtan Elementary School. In 1951, he launched his literary career with the publication of a short story, "After Marriage". In 1960, his novel, "The Dull Ice Flower", was published on the "United Daily News". After that, he published the Turbidity Trilogy between 1961 and 1967 and the Taiwanese Trilogy between 1964 and 1967; both of the series were his symbolic novels, pioneering the genre of novel sequences inspired by Taiwanese history.