• From the summer of 1927, he devoted himself to writing for the popular press and editing three literary fortnightlies in Shanghai between 1929 and 1935. Nobel Prize winner Pearl Buck encouraged him to write a book explaining China to the West. To do this, he retired to the mountains in the summer of 1934. What he brought back from the mountains was the publishing sensation My Country and My People (1935), which hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
He was married at the time and moved with his wife to the United States. At Harvard he received his Masters degree in comparative literature studying under literary scholar Bliss Perry and humanist Irving Babbitt. After Harvard Lin moved to France to work at the YMCA, and from there he went on to the University of Jena in Leipzig, Germany, where he completed his doctorate in linguistics. Lin returned to China to teach for 13 years. He was a professor of English literature at the University of Beijing from 1923 - 1926, and served as Dean at Amoy University in 1926.