Before Tong joined the Service Design family at the Royal College of Art, she graduated from Tsinghua university with a Bachelor's degree in Product Design. Tong gained experience in various skills such as hand drawing and 3D-modelling, and apart from that, Tong also spent time on illustration design as her own practice. This experience and skillset enabled her to perform well at the Royal college of art. On the Service Design course, Tong devoted her time to combining her knowledge from both product and service design in order to create better connections among humans, products and the environment.