[3] Working with Gu Kenfu and Chen Shouzhi, he adapted the notorious murder case into what has been identified as the first feature-length film produced in mainland China.

[2] He subsequently joined the Great China Film Company, with whom he co-directed Battle Exploits (1925) alongside Lu Jie.

[1] The Uprising sympathetically depicted salt miners rebelling against the capitalist business owners,[4] while The Classic for Girls was an omnibus that also featured the work of Cheng Bugao, Shen Xiling, Zhang Shichuan, and Zheng Zhengqiu.

[2] Films directed during this period included Gunshots in a Rainy Evening (1941), and Shadows in an Ancient House (1948),[3] as well as The Pearl Tunic (1938), Butterfly Love Flower (1938), and Clairvoyance (1942).

[1] In the late 1940s, he directed two films that offered sexualized thrills: Pink Bomb (1947) and Beauty's Blood (1948);[6] he also adapted the American Charlie Chan stories for Chinese audiences, with Xu Xinyuan as the titular character.

Storms on Ali Mountain was a commercial success, later receiving screenings for Taiwanese President Chiang Kai-shek as well as the Chinese diaspora in New York.

[3] Writing for the Encyclopaedia of China, Sun Chengjian describes Xu as pioneering the detective genre in Shanghai cinema.