[1][2] In 1913, he was admitted to the Union High School in Kunming, and in 1919, he was admitted to the History and Geography Department of the Beijing Higher Normal School (later Beijing Normal University), where he joined the Chinese Socialist Youth League and edited and published the newspaper Labor Culture under the guidance of Li Dazhao.

[3] After graduating in 1920, he returned to Yunnan to teach in a series of high schools and organized a "reading club" among students sympathetic to the Communist Party.

After his release from prison, he assumed the pseudonym Chu Zeng (Chinese: 楚曾) and became a lecturer and professor at Jinan University in Shanghai.

After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, he traveled to Kunming via Hong Kong and Haiphong, where he taught in the Department of Literature and History at Yunnan University.

[7] In 1954, the Chinese Historical Society announced the list of its first board of governors, with Guo Moruo as president, Wu Yuzhang and Fan Wenlan as vice-presidents, and him as a councilor.