He joined in their October 1922 celebration of the founding of the Republic of China (SB 10/11/1922), for instance. He reported in a letter to the Tsing Hua student journal Tsing Hua Weekly that all thirteen Chinese students at Grinnell (seven of them from Tsing Hua) asked for a day’s leave on October 10, 1922 to mark the occasion. At noon they congregated at T. C. Chao’s place, saluted the Republic’s national flag, sang the Chinese national anthem, and took a group photo. They then had scrambled eggs and a bowl of bok choy soup, to Liu no less delicious than the banquet Tsing Hua students had at their Beijing campus on that day. Liu thought that the evening program that the Chinese students put on for the Grinnell community would not only promote friendly cross-cultural interactions but also introduce China’s current state to the Americans, most of whom knew very little about China (Liu 195). 

Liu appeared to take his studies very seriously and therefore participated in fewer activities than his Chinese peers at the time. In the same letter that he sent to Tsing Hua Weekly, he mentioned that he was taking 16 hours of classes each week and had a lot of homework. For instance, for his class devoted to “Race Problems and their Solution” [taught by Professor Edward Steiner] he had to read two books and write two essays of 1,000-2,000 words each within two weeks. However, he considered the work worthwhile, asking rhetorically, “why would anyone bother to cross the ocean to study abroad if everything were the same as back home?” Liu also complained about what he saw as the excessive attention that athletics commanded at Grinnell, to him a sign of ignorance among the general student population (Liu 196). Still, Liu found the Grinnell community congenial; he socialized with faculty members almost every week, boarded at a local home, and once had a meal together with four other Tsing Hua alumni at a nearby American household. He was likely referring to a dinner hosted by Rev. Charles A. Carmen, whose brother was a professor at a mission school in China (GH 04/07/1923). In Liu’s story, the American hostess (Mrs. Carmen?) and her daughter sat at the same table, eating and chatting with the Tsing Hua cohort, a scenario that he thought would have been “unthinkable on any bigger campuses in the U.S.” (Liu 195). 

Liu studied education and psychology for one year at Grinnell (1922-1923) and transferred to the University of Chicago in 1923. From Chicago he earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in 1924 and reportedly also a Ph.D. in psychology in 1929. Liu returned to China the same year. He first taught at Chengdu University in Chengdu, Sichuan province, the first university in Sichuan. In 1935 Liu returned to the U.S., visiting Columbia, Harvard, and Yale University as a visiting scholar. He became Professor of Education and Chair of the Department of Education at Sichuan University upon his return to China in 1935. 

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Liu served as Vice President and Dean of Academics at Sichuan University. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1956, founded the Sichuan Psychology Society in 1963, and later served as the Vice Chairman of Chinese Psychology Society. He was also elected to the Chinese National People’s Congress for four terms in a row, serving from 1954 to 1978. Liu passed away in Sichuan in 1981.