His literary masterpieces include Chenlun (沈淪, Sinking), Chunfeng chenzui de wanshang (春風沈醉的晚上, Intoxicating Spring Nights), Guoqu (過去, The Past), Chuben (出奔, Flight) and so on.

Yu Dafu's literary works' writing style and main themes profoundly influenced a group of young writers and formed a spectacular romantic trend in Chinese literature in the 1920s and 1930s.

[citation needed] He then moved to Japan, where he studied economics at the Tokyo Imperial University between 1913 and 1922, where he met other Chinese intellectuals (namely, Guo Moruo, Zhang Ziping, and Tian Han).

He published one of his earlier works, the short story Chenlun (沈淪, Sinking), his most famous, while still in Japan in 1921.

[citation needed] In 1922, he returned to China as a literary celebrity and worked as the editor of Creation Quarterly, editing journals and writing short stories.

[citation needed] After the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, he returned to China and worked as a writer of anti-Japanese propaganda in Hangzhou.

In 1942 when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Singapore, he was forced to flee to Pajakoemboeh, Sumatra, Indonesia.

"The decadent ethos once swept through the world under the banner of aestheticism, and caring about morality was seen as something incompatible with emancipating the mind and reflecting the truth, which was 'decadent art'."

At the same time, this story is viewed as a representative of romanticism, which satisfies one of the main literature characteristics during the May Fourth period.

[5] In the "Intoxicating Spring Nights", Yu Dafu described how a female factory worker regained her self-confidence in a difficult situation.

At the same time, Yu Dafu laid the foundation for the criticism and self-reflection of Chinese international students' literature.