Born in 1939, Shu-fang Hsia spent her entire childhood years in the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), immediately followed by the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). During those turbulence years, her family moved from one province to another in China until 1949 when they left Chinese mainland and finally settled down in Taiwan in 1951.
After graduating from Tunghai University in Taiwan, she came to the United States for graduate study in 1962. She received two MA degrees from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, and St. John's University, Queens, NY respectively.

The most part of her professional career was at St. John's University, New York, where she was a tenured professor, a recipient of "Faculty Outstanding Achievement Award" and retired in 2000.

Traveling has always been one of her strong interests. During the past two decades she had made many trips to China, visited practically all Chinese provinces and regions. In 2012 she compiled her China trip articles into a two volume set, entitled How Close Yet How Remote; Sketches of My China Trips.

She and her husband George Lin currently reside in Boyds, Maryland.