In 1928, her parents-in-law allowed her to leave the family home in order to take up the teaching job at Datong Girls School. However, instead Xie moved to Hengyang to teach grade school, and then to Shanghai. In Shanghai, she enrolled in the Chinese literature department of the Shanghai Academy of Art where she developed her writing skills. It was at this time that she published "War Diary" (), which was a collection of her experiences on the front lines during the Northern Expedition, and included the articles originally published in the "Central Daily News." She mainly lived off the royalties of this work while she studied at the Shanghai Academy of Art. Sometime after 1929 she was the person credited with naming the young actress Wang Ying.