Tang arrived in the United States in 1918 at the age of 25 to begin his education at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1931, he moved to Peking University as a professor at the Department of Philosophy, where he was promoted to dean of College of Liberal Arts in 1946.

In December 1948 he refused to go to Taipei, Taiwan, while Chiang Kai-shek invited him to follow the Nationalists.

[1] In 1949, the year of the defeat of the Communists over the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, Tang stayed on Peking University in Beijing.

[4][5] Their elder son, Tang Yijie (1927–2014), was a Peking University professor, who had been described as China's top scholar on philosophy and Chinese studies.