By then, China was on the cusp of national liberation. One day while foraging through her husband's bookshelves for suitable reading material, she happened upon a book of speeches by Mao Zedong.

Wood remembered having heard him deliver an address from Yan'an on the radio and now became enticed by his political ideas.

In 1950, Huang was transferred to a new biological drugs factory set up by the Ministry of Agriculture in Kaifeng. Wood and their children joined him in 1953.

On commencing employment as an English lecturer at Henan University in 1957, Wood garnered a reputation for being both a strict taskmaster and a teacher from whom students could expect to receive encouragement. She specialized in the dramas of Eugene O'Neill.

As the first foreign teacher at Henan University, Wood motivated students and sparked their interest and enthusiasm for spoken English by taking them out of the classroom and engaging in conversations about anything they saw, from the trees on the campus, to the steamed buns in the canteen.

She also selected pieces from Grimm's Fairy Tales and Andersen's Fairy Tales, and compiled them into bilingual teaching materials for students.

Throughout her half-century career, Wood taught more than 3,000 undergraduates and over 300 graduate students.