She was a member of the 7th and 8th Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Tu was born in Beiping, on 8 March 1934, while her ancestral home is in Changzhou, Jiangsu.
After graduating in 1955, Tu was assigned as an interpreter of the Ministry of Foreign Trade [zh].
She started to publish works in 1956, and joined the faculty of University of International Business and Economics (Beijing).
On 21 September 2022, Tu died in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 88.