Hu Yanhan lived through the chaos of the civil war and the eight years of resistance against Japan. As a student, he faced homelessness, instability and near starvation. However, this environment did foster a thoroughly resilient and optimistic character that allowed him to bravely confront adverse circumstances. In 1948, he joined the board of National Forest Management Bureau, serving for more than ten years and gaining in-depth experience of forest industry management. In his later years, he was sent as a forestry expert to the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Indonesia on forestry industry observation missions. In 1972, he was caught up in an espionage case and sent to prison. Serving a six-year sentence, he remained focused on academic research, and became a writer after his release in 1978, producing a number of books.