[2][3] His first discovery of animal fossils from the Cambrian sediments (now called Maotianshan Shales) at Chengjiang County, Yunnan Province, led to the establishment of the Chengjiang biota, an assemblage of various life forms during the Cambrian Period.
[4] The discovery of the Chengjiang biota, remarked as "among the most spectacular in this [20th] century",[5] added to the better understanding of how animal forms (different phyla) originated and evolved during the so-called Cambrian explosion.
[7] The Yunnan University claims that it "gained a worldwide reputation through the discovery and research [by Hou].
[5] He was appointed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences to become a geologist at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in 1997.
[1] The Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation of Hong Kong awarded him its Paleontology and Archeology Prize in 2006,[5] and its Science and Technology Innovation Award with recognition as among the "Leading Scientific and Technological Talents of Yunnan" in 2017.