She toured the country performing in politically oriented plays that supported Chinese resistance[1] before settling in Shanghai after the war ended in 1945.
[4] A Doll’s House, which ultimately ends with the lead woman leaving her husband and children to find herself, was considered to be antagonistic to the virtues that the New Life Movement was promoting.
[2] In 1935 she moved to Taiyuan where she briefly worked for the Northeast Film Company as an actress[5] before joining the Shanghai Amateur Dramatists Association, a leftist theatre group, in 1937.
[6] Wang toured the country with the Association, performing in politically oriented plays that supported the Chinese resistance during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
[10] Her work was financially supported by the state, which provided her with significant access to filmic resources, allowing her to learn the techniques of filmmaking through practice and experiment with film form.
Wang is considered to be the first female director since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, however she was not the only woman working as a filmmaker in the early communist era.
Because gender equality was a significant part of the Communist Party's plan for economic reform, the following two decades would see a rise in the number of female directors in China, although the industry would continue to be overrepresented by men.
In 1963, Zhou Enlai, the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, appointed Wang to co-direct the film adaption of the popular play Sentinels under the Neon Lights.