One of the city's many creative types is creative advert maker Li Limin who packs a lot of meaning into seconds. He defies the saying that Hangzhou's charms can sap ambition.

Small is beautiful and brevity is eloquent, according to Li Limin, a Hangzhou film maker famous for his inspiring short videos and striking public-service announcements.

Li, a Hangzhou native who is based in the city, is a producer and director for Zhejiang Satellite TV. He is also a poet, painter, trumpeter and film critic.

The local TV celebrity has won numerous awards. His many touching and thought-provoking public-service advertisements demonstrate clearly that you don't need a 90-minute feature film to tell many stories.

Li has always been curious and daring, sometimes quite bold.

He tells the story that as a child he wanted to know how cockroaches tasted. So, he ate a few. His conclusion: "Not bad. Tastes just like silk worm chrysalis."

That story became famous among friends and colleagues who are impressed by his courage, keen observation and appreciation of life's small details.

One of his well-known public-service clips promoted the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

In the 30-second clip "Ubiquitous," Li turned his lens on bicyclists riding in ancient alleyways, along bridges and courtyards. The carved stone lions at gateways came to life and started to play football; the door-gods came to life as fencing masters.

His works sometimes feature stars like Hong Kong singer Andy Lau and well-known theater director Stan Lai, but Li never overlooks the power and emotional influence of ordinary people.

He once filmed 90-year-old Xu Yuanbai, a guqin (seven-string zither) master for a public-service ad about preserving intangible cultural heritage. The old gentleman playing guqin in a pavilion in a bamboo forest evoked a poetic scene from a martial arts film.

The versatile Li also turns his talents to poetry, music, painting and film reviews. Two of his poems, "Torch" and "A Sound of Wind and Rain Last Night" were selected in 2007 for a poetry anthology of Zhejiang Province.

At university Li had a band and played trumpet. He says he loved nostalgic and sentimental music and often used Carole King's singing as the background music to many of his works.

Hong Kong film maker Wong Kar-wai is one of Li's favorite directors. When he saw Wong's film "Fallen Angels," he was moved to tears by the loneliness and isolation of the city dwellers.

He enjoys art-house films, including Pedro Almodovar's "Live Flesh" about love and desperation.

At work Li is known as a perfectionist. He may spend half a day preparing to film a two-second shot.

Li calls himself an "optimistic pessimist," who sees through to the not-always-pleasant truths about life but still wants to live a happy life.

He has special feelings for his hometown Hangzhou with its easy and casual living. Some people say the city is so comfortable that it can make young people forget their ambitions.

For this reason, Li once considered leaving Hangzhou to pursue his career in film, but decided to stay. The city has found its place in his heart and appears in his trademark advertisements.

"If I were to shoot a short video about Hangzhou, I would probably make it a very quiet piece with a sleeping old man on the bank of the West Lake, to describe the tranquility, fantasy and beauty of the city," he says.

Li has established his own studio and production team in Hangzhou. The schedule is packed.

He plans a digital film, several commercial ads and city promotional videos for the coming World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

Source: Shanghai Daily