[2] He graduated from Hunan First Normal University, where he studied alongside Mao Zedong, Cai Hesen, and his brother Xiao Zisheng.

Xiao returned to China in 1939 and worked in Yan'an, he once served in various political roles in the CCP's revolutionary base area government.

By age 31, he married a 25-year-old Russian girl named Vassar (Chinese: 瓦萨) in Vladivostok, and soon divorced.

His third wife, Eva Sandberg (1911-2001) (Chinese: 叶华), was a Jewish German photographer; they married in 1935 in the Soviet Union.

He married his fourth wife Gan Lu (Chinese: 甘露; her birthname was Jiang Deliang 蒋德良) in October 1944 in Yan'an; they divorced in September 1950.