The newly founded Oriental seminar department captivated Krebs, who had concluded he wished to make the study of foreign languages the primary objective of his education.

Within two years, Emil Krebs had absorbed Chinese to such an extent that he had attained the level of a well-educated native.

Despite his passion for learning foreign languages, he did not neglect his legal studies and passed the first State examination (equivalent to today's Staatsexamen) after the prescribed 6 semesters on 12 June 1891, again with "good" marks.

On 5 December 1893, Krebs arrived in Beijing where he worked and lived until the cessation of diplomatic relations between Germany and China due to World War I.

In November 1897, the German Reich took the murder of two missionaries in Shandong Province as a pretext to occupy Qingdao.

After she had inquired as to who in the German delegation was writing such elegant documents in Chinese, and after learning it was Krebs, she invited him often for discussions over tea.

A German attaché in China, Werner Otto von Hentig, related how one day, he had heard two strangers speaking a language he did not recognize.

In February and March 1914, he was attached to the envoy of Haxthausen during its official travel to central and south China.

Since he was in informed circles of Beijing as an always welcome guest, it was decided that the Chinese empress should receive updates more frequently than interlocutors.

Besides German, Krebs predominantly spoke English, French, Russian, Chinese, Greek, Italian, Turkish, Latin, Spanish, and Arabic for learning and improving his knowledge of a new language.

Krebs produced an extended translation of the Chinese Shade Plays by Wilhelm Grube (Munich: 1915).