[2] In 1944 Chao and Chen were awarded a joint fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to study at the University of Chicago in the United States.

[4][5] Afterward, she returned to China to teach English and North American literature at Yenching University, Beijing.

[2] Chao's husband Chen opposed the government's proposal to simplify Chinese writing in the 1950s and was labeled a Rightist and an enemy of the Communist Party.

[6] After he returned, he was banned from publishing research and committed suicide after denunciation and persecution during the Cultural Revolution.

In spite of this, she created the first complete Chinese translation of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which was published in 1991.