As a sword gains its blade from constant grinding, a plum blossom acquires its fragrance in the bitter cold. At the time the Japanese war was raging, his father died when he was three, leaving his mother to stick it out with six children. One winter when he was six years old he saw a plum tree in full blossom in the courtyard of a pharmacy. Marvelling at its fortitude, he realized that he was not just a poor survivor but an individual striving for knowledge and success in the world of art. Refusing to passively accept his poor life, he started to learn how to paint. He became a regular visitor to the local library and even gained permission from the curator to move in there. One of the books he read, the "Mustard Seed Garden Manual", exerted an enormous influence on him. Its detailed introduction to the technique and theory of traditional Chinese landscape and flower-and-bird painting provided him with a fundamental art education. He Meibian

A sword gains its blade from constant grinding, a/the plum blossom acquires its fragrance in the bitter cold. At the time, the Anti-Japanese war was raging. His father died when he was three, leaving his mother to stick it out with six children. One winter, when he was six years old, he saw a plum tree in full blossom in the courtyard of a pharmacy. Marveling at its fortitude, he realized that he was not just a poor survivor but an individual striving for knowledge and success in the world of art. [Was he though? Your English is mostly correct, but I'm not sure I understand the logic of your brief story here.] Refusing to passively accept his poor life, he started to learn how to paint. He became a regular visitor to the local library and even gained the permission of the curator [or in more common US English, "...even got permission from the curator"] to move in there. One of the books he read, the Mustard Seed Garden Manual, exerted/had an enormous influence on him. Its detailed introductions to the techniques and theories of traditional Chinese landscape and flower-and-bird painting provided him with a fundamental art education. He Meibian