On advice from his mentor Li Ji, he went to University College London and studied Egyptology, earning a doctorate that was finally awarded to him in 1946.
Due to a commission, the Institute received from Albania, in 1972, Xia returned to Beijing with his colleagues and resurrected his scholarly career.
[5] Xia left for his studies at University College London in June 1935 and arrived in the United Kingdom in September later that year.
He pointed out how Yetts could not read Chinese when a student raised a question during a lecture and how he struggled to comprehend dynastic jargon when analyzing the authenticity of an original record by the Qing imperial court kept in the British Museum.
[8] Xia accumulated a handful of field experience in archaeology by participating in Wheeler's excavation at Maiden Castle in Dorset in July 1936 and returned to London in September later that year.
Despite being far away from home, he always kept himself updated on China's ever-changing situation through reading the newspaper and having conversations with fellow Chinese students studying abroad.
Therefore, it was believed that these cards were intentionally made for future research purposes, as his notes allowed both himself and modern scholars to easily comprehend his findings.
[14] Xia's research discussed the material, typology (including the technical peculiarities), use, arrangement and pictorial representation of the beads in relation to the nine divisions of the Ancient Egyptian dynasties.
It was not clear whether he had lost interest in the subject or whether he was too preoccupied with Chinese archeological work due to his positions in the respective academies.
[21] The outbreak of the Second World War also briefly halted his research as the University College London was closed and he had to return to China.
Yet, he was still persecuted by the Communist Party even though he entirely focused on Chinese archaeology since 1943 (which will be discussed in the next section), preventing him from potentially continuing the study of Egyptology out of self-protection.
In 1950, he was appointed associate dean at the newly established Chinese Academy of Sciences and headed field archeological projects.
[25] Xia was keen on passing on his excavation skills and techniques to his students as he once taught them that the success of an archeologist is not determined by what he or she manages to discover but the method of how he or she recovers artifacts.
[29] Despite his dedication and devotion to Chinese archaeology and China, he together with many of his colleagues and students were categorized as 'capitalist-roaders' (走資派), 'rightists' and 'Cow demons and snake spirits' (牛鬼蛇神) who were obstructing the goal of the revolution in eradicating social classes.
[30] During the time, even his undergraduate dissertation was used against him as it included pro-nationalist (the Kuomintang) contents (which Xia noted that he was forced by Chiang to do so back then in his diary).
[31] He was then sent to a 'cow shed' (牛棚), the term for re-education camps established during the Cultural Revolution that were targeted at intellectuals, in Beijing.
While there might have been others such as Guo Songtao, a diplomat of the Qing Empire who had travelled to Egypt or Duanfang, a scholar who collected tracings of Egyptian stela, neither of them truly understood or developed the technique to conduct a thorough excavation as Xia since they did not intend to study Egyptology properly.
He serves as an inspiration for future generations and reminds them of the importance of the Chinese perspective in contribution to 'a new understanding' of ancient Egypt.