During this time, she began her interest in politics through left-wing journals and newspapers and in 1924, with the help of her elder sister and brother-in-law, she joined the local communist youth movement.

[3][4][5] During the May Thirtieth Movement in 1925, she led students to block British kerosene tankers from docking in the pier in Yibin.

She returned to China in the winter of 1928, and engaged in the underground Communist work in Shanghai, Jiangxi and Hubei at time of the then head of the Nationalist Government Chiang Kai-shek's campaign to exterminate 'leftists and radicals'.

She changed her name as Zhao Yiman to avoid implicating her family and gave up her infant son to her paternal uncle to be taken care.

In the hospital, Zhao converted and recruited Han Yongyi, a female nurse, and Dong Xianxun, a guard.

On her way to the execution ground, Zhao sang loudly the Ode of the Red Flag, and shouted anti-Japanese slogans.