A departure from his usual genre of focus, Li soon returned to crime fiction in (Feichang Baodao) his most recent non-film production.
[citation needed] Li is considered in the avant-garde of modern Chinese cinema; in 2010 he self-composed and directed China's first crime oriented feature film, (The Man Behind The Courtyard House).
Under these influences, he studied the liuqin lute from a young age, and enrolled in Anhui Vocational College of Art after completing senior high school.
Unexpectedly, the story was so provoking to the group of teenagers, that the next day, two girls from his class skipped school to search for the film in the movie theater.
[citation needed] After realizing that his dream was to be a filmmaker, Li abruptly left Shenzhen to move back to his home of Anhui and began his livelihood as a director.