In the thirty-third year of Guangxu (1907), he returned to China and set up a set painting workshop in Shanghai Baxianqiao, with 30 or 40 students. Famous painters such as Liu Haisu, Xu Beihong, Zhang Bingguang, Wang Yachen, Ding Quan and Chen Baoyi all received early education here. Later, he founded the Correspondence School of Chinese and Western Painting and Shanghai Oil Painting Institute, and engaged in art education while creating. In the past 20 years, nearly 5,000 students have studied in the above-mentioned schools.
Zhou Xiang is a famous painter in modern times, a pioneer of China oil painting art and an art educator, and also one of the founders of the transformation of China painting art from traditional teacher education to formal art school education. In the 8th year of the Republic of China (19 19), he and Feng Zikai, Ou Yangyuqian and others initiated the organization of China Aesthetic Education Association, published Aesthetic Education Magazine, and publicized new ideas and new arts. Around 14, he was recommended by Wu Zhihui, a veteran of the Kuomintang, to teach aesthetic education and foreign languages at St. John's University.
In his later years, Zhou Xiang became withdrawn, lived in seclusion in his hometown, and was unhappy. He almost burned all his masterpieces, so his oil paintings rarely circulated, which is a pity. At the same time, life is in a dilemma. Thanks to the students' financial aid and his wife Sun Jing 'an's day-to-day farming and day-to-day knitting, they have food and talk.