Not having enough money to pay for a regular university tuition, Qu enrolled in the newly established Russian Language Institute (俄文专修馆) under the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since it did not require payment of fee.

[2] Qu worked hard in the language institute, learning both French and Russian and spending his spare time studying Buddhist philosophy and classical Chinese.

His earliest contacts with revolutionary circles came when he participated in discussions of Marxist analysis hosted by Li Dazhao at Beijing University, who was the campus' head librarian.

Qu later took a job as a journalist for a Beiping newspaper Morning News (晨报) and was sent to Moscow as a correspondent, even though this would jeopardise a career in the civil service which his earlier training had prepared him for.

[3] In January 1923, Qu accepted the invitation from Chen Duxiu, leader of the Chinese Communist Party at that time, to come back from Russia to join in his cause.

Following his dismissal, Qu worked both as a writer and a translator in Shanghai, fought literary battles along with Mao Dun and Lu Xun and forged a profound friendship with leaders of the left-wing cultural movement.

In 1934, the situation became increasingly dangerous and Qu could not stay in Shanghai any longer, so he went to the Communists' Central Revolutionary Base Area in Ruijin, Jiangxi province.

After reaching Luohanling, a small hill in Zhongshan Park, Qu chose a place to sit down on the grass, smiled and nodded to the executioner, saying "very good here!".

[6] During his arrest, Qu wrote a book named Superfluous Words to express his political thinking and traced his change from a literatus to a revolutionist.

Tsi-an Hsia (夏济安; 夏濟安) describes Qu in The Gate of Darkness: Studies on the Leftist Literary Movement in China (published 1968) as "the tenderhearted Communist".