In 1919, he entered Columbia University to study literature and continued to the graduate school there to specialize in drama.
During the May Thirtieth Movement in 1925, he returned to China at the same time as Wen Yiduo, Yu Shangyuan and Liang Shiqiu.
[1] Zhao served as a professor and head of the Department of Drama at Beijing Art College.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Zhao became a professor of foreign languages at Shandong University.
[2] In 1958, when Shandong University moved from Qingdao to Jinan, he stayed in Qingdao and became a professor of foreign languages at Shandong Ocean College (present-day Ocean University of China).