About
Things Not on My CV #
“Lizao” is a nickname given to me by a close friend in high school. It comes from a compressed, similar-sounding version of my real name, Li Zihao, when pronounced quickly. I like the name because it is simple and clean, and also because it carries a small blessing: to approach difficult and resistant knowledge like a chisel working through stone. I like it so much that I often use it as my online name. If you like, you can also call me Lizao. Under this name, I have written modern poems and travel notes. To practice English and front-end coding, I translated some of them and published them on my blog.
I come from Zhong County, Chongqing, not far from the city described by Peter Hessler in River Town. About one hundred kilometres downstream along the Yangtze River lies my hometown. I graduated from the High School Affiliated to Southwest University, and I am now a third-year undergraduate student in the School of Journalism and Communication at Lanzhou University, where I am advised by Li Xinxin . During the fall semester of 2026, I also studied as an exchange student at National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Journalism and National Taiwan Normal University’s Department of Social Education.
A photo taken in front of Taipei 101 that actually looks like a person
When I was a sophomore, I minored in philosophy. At that time, my reading interests leaned toward intellectual history and STS, and I was deeply drawn to long-form nonfiction writing. Through the practice of data journalism, however, I gradually became fascinated by another way of thinking: collecting data, analyzing it, and drawing careful inferences from it. In this way, I felt that, like the protagonist of Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, who spends his life among the branches, I could maintain a relationship with the world I live in that is both close and slightly distant, and thus, in Calvino’s words, “truly live with others.”
Through Kosuke Imai’s Quantitative Social Science: An Introduction, I learned some basic quantitative research methods and the R language. From there, I began to study quantitative and computational methods, and also learned some necessary mathematics and computer science. Later, I continued to learn from courses and books by scholars such as Xie Yu and Gary King. These experiences helped me develop the ability to ask questions and solve them. Of course, I also have to thank GPT and Claude, which, to be honest, may have helped me the most :(. My research sensibility and ability are still at an early stage, and some of my work may still be quite boring. They still need time to grow.
When I was in middle school, I was diagnosed with leukemia. After a stem cell transplant, I was fortunate enough to recover. This experience changed my attitude toward life and made me want to do as many interesting things as possible within the limited time I have. Three years after my recovery, I fell in love with long-distance cycling. In August 2020, I cycled along China National Highway 318. In August 2023, I rode from Qingdao to Lanzhou. In August 2025, I cycled the Duku Highway loop in Xinjiang. If I complete the section from Lanzhou to Urumqi, I will finish a cycling route across China.
A little too excited in front of the Potala Palace, with an accidental underwear cameo
Besides traveling, I also like video games. My favorites are Dota 2 and the Dark Souls series. When I have free time, I sometimes play Animal Crossing on my Nintendo Switch.
About This Site #
This site is built with Hugo. The theme is based on Hugo-ht , designed by Hao Hongtao, with some small changes. Some parts of the site design are inspired by JunyuJ .
Last modified on 2026-04-29