Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain with excellent xylose-fermenting capacity and inhibitor tolerance is crucial for lignocellulosic ethanol production. In this study, a combined strategy including site-directed mutagenesis, mating, evolutionary engineering, and haploidization was applied to obtain strains with ideal xylose fermentabilities. Haploid industrial strain KFG4-6B was engineered to overexpress endogenous xylulokinase (XK) and heterologous native or mutated xylose reductase (XR) and xylitol dehydrogenase (XDH) from Scheffersomyces stipitis. The XR-mutated strain HX57D showed over 12% increase in both xylose consumption rate and ethanol yield compared with the XR-native strain. To improve the xylose uptake, the HX57D-derived diploids were subjected to evolutionary engineering. In comparison with HX57D, evolved diploid Z4X-21-18 achieved 4.5-fold increases in rates of xylose consumption and ethanol production when fermenting xylose. When fermenting mixed sugars, the glucose and xylose uptake rates were 1.4-fold and 8.3-fold, respectively, higher. H18s28, a haploid of Z4X-21-18, enabled a further 10% increase in xylose consumption rate when fermenting xylose only. However, it was inferior to its diploid parent when fermenting mixed sugars. In the presaccharification-simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (P-SSF) of the whole pretreated wheat straw slurry with high contents of multiple inhibitors, Z4X-21-18 produced approximately 42 g/L ethanol with a yield of 0.38 g/g total sugars.