"I was amazed someone could be so relaxed while hanging from a cliff, and I wished I could be like that, too," the 33-year-old recalls.

The Beijing-based art editor (pictured) started indoor training a year later and undertook his first outdoor expedition in 2005.

While scuttling up a bluff in 2007, he was suddenly overcome by a strange feeling, one of ambiguous but intense familiarity.

"It wasn't until later that I realized it was the same location that I'd seen in that photograph," he says.

"I even located the guy in the photo through the Internet and was surprised to find he was one of my friends. I think it was predestined."

He has since made climbing one of his priorities in life.

While some of his friends have chosen the pastime over their jobs, he says he seeks to strike a better balance in his quest for aesthetics.

"Scenery ranks higher than difficulty among our criteria for choosing places and routes," he says.

Li, who is known in the climbing community as "Yuanshangcao", or "Acao" (Grassy Expanse), makes an effort to document his excursions. He devotes much of his time snapping photos, writing blogs and developing new routes.

He also believes rock climbing helps him hone his problem-solving abilities.

"It's a comprehensive and objective activity that forces you to think from the gut," Li says.

He explains that when one climber can't figure out a way to tackle a route, often, another can.

"In other words, there are various solutions for a single difficult point," he says.

He says two types of achievements make climbing worthwhile - when he finally succeeds in scaling a route that he has failed to ascend many times, or when he makes it to the top on the first try.

Li recalls that it took him more than 20 attempts to scale one escarpment in Beijing's Baihe, in Miyun county, called "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest".

But Li says he doesn't use the word "conquer" to describe a successful trip up a formidable precipice.

"People can challenge themselves, but they can never conquer nature," he says.

Li explains that rock climbing requires constant self-cultivation.