Yunxin Zhang was born and grew up in the Sichuan Province of China. In Chinese characters her name is written as 张昀昕, and in the Chinese Romanization it is Zhāng Yúnxīn. She received her B.A. in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language from East China Normal University in Shanghai in 2001. She attended The Ohio State University where she earned a M.A. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. Her areas of interest include Chinese language pedagogy, Chinese film studies, Chinese ethnicity, traditional performance and performance-connected literature of China. She taught at OSU for eight years and at the University of Nevada, Reno for three years, in the subjects of Chinese language, culture, literature, and teaching Chinese as a Second Language. She has been working at Davidson Academy Online since 2017.
She lives in Reno with her husband and two boys. They enjoy traveling, camping, fishing, and watching movies together. As for her personal hobbies, she also loves cooking, gardening, crafting, and reading.