[citation needed] She was adopted by General Chen's friend, educator and statesman Zhang Shizhao.

[1] Zhang married her first husband Hong Junyan (洪君彦), a Peking University professor, in 1949.

[2] In his memoir, Hong Junyan states that when he was persecuted and humiliated at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Hanzhi offered no sympathy and instead despised him.

She began an affair with a colleague at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute, and was caught in the act by Hong's sister.

In 1969, Hong was sent to perform manual labour in Jiangxi Province, and when he returned to Beijing in 1971, rumours were circulating that Zhang was having an affair with Qiao Guanhua, the head of China's UN delegation.