[1] His employment at the Heilongjiang Daily, which followed the party line, and his decision to wear a red arm band indicating an alliance with Chairman Mao Zedong, allowed him access to scenes otherwise only described in written and verbal accounts.

The Heilongjiang Daily newspaper had a strict policy in accordance with a government dictate that only "positive" images could be published, which consisted mostly of smiling revolutionaries offering praise for Chairman Mao.

The "negative" images, which depicted the atrocities of the time, were hidden beneath a floorboard in his house before he brought them to light at a photo exhibition in 1988.

At the time of his birth the city was located in Kwantung Leased Territory, where Japan maintained the puppet regime, Manchukuo.

His mother died when he was three, and his older brother, who was a member of the People's Liberation Army was killed during the Chinese Civil War.

[citation needed] Li had taken meticulous care of the "negative" images he captured while at the newspaper, hiding them beneath a floorboard of his one-room apartment.

Gittings writes that Li's photos reflect a desire to record and understand, and that it was "unique" for a simple reason: "Although the post-Mao Chinese government has labelled the cultural revolution '10 years of chaos,' it still tries to suppress any real inquiry into the countless human tragedies it caused..."[5] The book, which has not appeared in China, took many years to publish.

Li's "negative" pictures (those that depicted the atrocities of the cultural revolution) were first revealed publicly in March 1988 at a Chinese Press Association's photography competition in Beijing.

In December of that year, Li met Robert Pledge, a French-British photography editor who was director of Contact Press Images, an international photo agency based in New York City, who had come to Beijing.

Seven months later, in June 1989, the events of Tiananmen Square made worldwide headlines, and Li became determined to produce a book to show the world the images from the Cultural Revolution.

This was the result of always returning to the paper with one extra frame on the film roll, a way of always being prepared to cover a breaking news event at the last minute.