[4] A cast of Chinese students from OSU and Oberlin College performed one of them, The Wedded Husband, in April 1919 to an audience of 1300 in the university chapel.

He wrote and acted in the play Yama Zhao in 1923, which strongly opposed the brutal warfare that plagued China at the time, which is now known as the Warlord Era.

[8][6] In 1925, Hong Shen published the film script Mrs. Shentu in the Shanghai magazine Eastern Miscellany.

He returned to teach at Fudan University after the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945, but was forced out because of his pro-Communist sympathy.

He taught briefly at Xiamen University in Fujian Province before going to Northeast China in 1948, which was under Communist control.

[8] After the Communists won the Chinese Civil War and founded the People's Republic of China in 1949, Hong Shen was appointed Director of the Bureau of External Cultural Relations under the Ministry of Culture, and Vice-President of the China Theatre Association.