[1] In 1931, Li was present at the ordination of Deaconess Lucy Vincent at St. John's Cathedral in Hong Kong when the preacher had asked for women to give their lives to work for Christian ministry.

After working for two years in All Saints Cathedral, in Kowloon, helping refugees in Hong Kong who fled mainland China in the midst of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Li was sent by Bishop Ronald Hall, Bishop of Victoria, Hong Kong, to help with refugees in Macau at the Macau Protestant Chapel.

Six months into her new post, she returned to Hong Kong to be ordained as a deaconess on 22 May 1941 by Bishop Hall at St. John's Cathedral, where she received her first call.

Hall explained to the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, William Temple: "I have given her permission to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

[3] It was to be 30 years before any Anglican church regularised the ordination of women; to avoid further controversy she resigned her licence (though not her priest's orders) after the end of the war.

During this time, social changes from the rise of the People's Republic of China meant she was subjected to much public criticism and ridicule for adhering to a foreign religion.

She was appointed an honorary (nonstipendiary) assistant priest at St. John's Chinese congregation and St. Matthew's parish in Toronto in 1983.

[15] She is also memorialized in the calendar of saints of the Anglican Church of Canada with a feast day on February 26, the anniversary of her death.