He became director of the School of Egyptology at Cairo, producing numerous very valuable works and pioneering the decipherment of Demotic, the simplified script of the later Egyptian periods.
Two of his stelas are known, the one with a hieroglyphic inscription is in the Ashmolean Museum (Ash. M. 1971/18), the other, Demotic stela, of which only seven fragments have been found, is in the British Museum (BM 886).
In May 1921, Zheng helped set up a drama society called Minzhong Xiju She (Demotic opera troupe 民眾戲劇社) with Mao Dun, Ye Shengtao, Chen Dabei, Ouyang Yuqian, Xiong Foxi and other writers.