[1]In August 1931, Chen Xuejun participated in her first art exhibition, serving as a model for Ichiki Shiori, a Japanese mainland female artist.
A women’s section of a newspaper reported, “Using a local girl as a model—Ichiki Shiori prepares an artwork for the Taiwan Exhibition.” Their connection is presumed to have been facilitated by Koton Sato.In an October interview that same year, Chen Xuejun mentioned that although several works from the Women’s Higher College were exhibited at the Taiwan Exhibition that year, none were by Taiwanese artists.
At the time, six students from the Women’s Higher College were chosen for the Eastern Painting Division, including her classmates Zhou Hongchou, Qiu Jinlian, and Peng Rongmei [zh].
In 1937, the alumni magazine of the Women’s Higher College described Chen Xuejun's life in the “Updates on Classmates” section: “Her child passed away in April of last year, leaving her very lonely every day.
The government, through the Taiwan Education Association, encouraged realistic painting styles that had been promoted since the Meiji Restoration, while opposing traditional depictions of landscapes or the "Four Gentlemen" (plum, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum).
As a result of the government's deliberate control over artistic styles, only three local Taiwanese painters under the age of 20 were selected for the Eastern Painting Division in the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition.