After many years of relative obscurity as an artist, Hou Chun-Ming's quick ascent into the art world began in April 2007 when Hong Kong Sotheby's auctioned his graphic artwork Erotic Paradise.

In his representative painting of that era: The Intestine Sutra series, he attempted to magnify the conflict between “sex” and “folk lore” within his art.

The title of Anecdotes about Spirits and Immortals was inspired by the name of Gan Bao's book In Search of the Supernatural.

After visiting the Hall of Dragon Metamorphoses in Kaoshiung, Hou was shocked to find they chained the mental patients together.

[7] He lamented: “Geniuses such as poet Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud、painter Vincent Willem Van Gogh、Amedeo Modigliani、Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were all dead at the age of 37.

[8] When I was 10, I was fascinated that their lives could burst into flames so suddenly and so brilliantly, therefore, I thought to die young would be worth it.

A Suicide Message of Dying on Love at Age 36, Hou writes: “ My whole body hurt sharply when I lie down, I was not spared the pain when I was out of the bed either.”。 Hou did not stay depressed for long, he participated in group therapy and become a freelance writer and to paint aimlessly.

Through voluminous freelance writing and graffiti paintings, Hou’s creative style had metamorphosed from the art of “challenging any opponent to a fight” to the search for one's inner soul.

[10] At the end of 2005, an art collector sent Hou's work to Hong Kong Sotheby's Sales for auction.

In the same year at Hong Kong Christie's auction, his woodblock printings Anecdotes about Spirits and Immortals, a set of 37 pieces, were sold for $2.64 million HKD.

By combining traditional religious rituals, body symbols and sex, he aims to relieve observers from life's strangest phenomena.