Born and raised in Shanghai, Liu Hao spent much of his youth watching films by Ren Xudong and Cheng Yin and, as he grew older, the works of the fifth generation directors.
[1] Undeterred, Liu raised ¥25,000 from banks to make a short Beijing Opera music video which went on to win a prize in Shanghai.
With his name on the map, Liu was allowed to enter the 1997 incoming class of the Beijing Film Academy.
[2] It nevertheless was screened abroad, and won a special mention at the Berlin International Film Festival[3] and a NETPAC award.
[2] With expectations that the film would be not only critically, but more importantly commercially successful, the China Film Group and the Peking University Kwans Group invested ¥5 million to Liu for his project, Two Great Sheep, a rural comedy about a poor peasant couple being forced to take care of two sheep of a superior breed.