The new bride celebrated her twenty-first birthday on the maritime passage to Shanghai.
Huang found employment at Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University in Wugong county, Shaanxi province, which was where Wood began her study of the Chinese language. In 1947, their first child was delivered at the local British missionary-run hospital.
Wood claimed that her proficiency in Mandarin grew during a second stint in Shanghai from 1949 to 1953. She found a job there as a typist for the Texaco Oil Company.
