April 2005 — Currently a roving reporter for Chengdu Commercial Daily, one of western China’s most successful newspapers, Li has worked as a journalist since graduating from university in 1995. One of Li’s best known investigative stories concerned a drug-addicted mother whose infant died at home of starvation as local police kept the woman in detention and ignored her pleas for them to go look after the child. Li Yaling also writes serialized fiction for Chengdu Commercial Daily.