In 1918, he traveled to the United States to earn his bachelor's degree at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he took up a major in political and social sciences, along with a minor in history.

Shortly afterward, he enrolled at Columbia University in New York to pursue a graduate degree in economics and politics in 1919.

In 1921, he transferred to King's College, Cambridge as a special student, where he fell in love with English Romantic poetry like that of Keats and Shelley.

[5] When the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore visited China, Xu Zhimo served as one of his oral interpreters.

He worked as an editor and professor at several schools before his death on 19 November 1931, dying in a plane crash near Jinan and Tai'an, Shandong[2] while flying on a Stinson Detroiter from Nanjing to Beijing.

Xu Zhimo's various love affairs with Zhang Youyi, Lin Huiyin, and Lu Xiaoman are well known in China.

"[8] On 19 November 1931, Xu prepared to leave Nanking to attend a lecture given by Lin Huiyin at a university in Peking.

[9] He boarded a China Airways Federal Stinson Detroiter,[10] an aircraft contracted by Chunghwa Post to deliver airmail on the Nanjing-Beijing route.

[2][12] Xu Zhimo, who suffered from fatal cerebral trauma and several cuts on his body, was killed instantly as well as one of the two pilots.

[17][18] To commemorate Xu, in July 2008, a stone of white Beijing marble was installed at the Backs of King's College, Cambridge (near the bridge over the River Cam).

The one used here (by permission) was translated by Guohua Chen and published in the University of Cambridge's 800th anniversary book,[19] and differs from the one quoted in the carvings of the Xu Zhimo Friendship Garden added around the Memorial stone by King's College in 2018.

The golden willows by the riverside Are young brides in the setting sun; Their glittering reflections on the shimmering river Keep undulating in my heart.

The green tape grass rooted in the soft mud Sways leisurely in the water; I am willing to be such a waterweed In the gentle flow of the River Cam.

That pool in the shade of elm trees Holds not clear spring water, but a rainbow Crumpled in the midst of duckweeds, Where rainbow-like dreams settle.