He is well known for his roles in Zhang Yang's Shower and Wu Tianming's The King of Masks, the latter film helping him garner a Best Actor prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
This is one of the only two films where Zhang Yimou has a leading role, the other being Wu Tianming's Old Well.
Wu Tianming has said that this movie could not be made today—in addition to the increased censorship in China following the Tiananmen incidents of 1989, all of the major films in China go to "two and a half directors." He explains that while his film The King of Masks played for 11 weeks in the United States, the Chinese distributor decided that it would be released for only three days in theatres there.