While Red Beads would win a FIPRESCI award in the 1993 International Film Festival Rotterdam, the film also caught the wrath of Chinese censors, who blacklisted He Jianjun in 1994 along with several other prominent filmmakers, including Tian Zhuangzhuang, Wang Xiaoshuai, Wu Wenguang, Zhang Yuan, and Ning Dai.
Jian Yi co-founded the China Village Documentary Project with filmmaker Wu Wenguang in 2004, which was the impetus for the development of IFChina.