Born in Manchuria and growing up during the Culture Revolution, Zhang Miaoyan barely had a chance to see movies. In the 90's he got an opportunity to study art at UC Berkeley which enabled him to watch foreign movies nonstop. Miaoyan started writing stories about contemporary China. None of them were published due to state censorship. In the summer of 2006 he borrowed money and spent four weeks making his first movie Xiaolin Xiaoli. Black Blood, his second feature film, received post-production support from Hubert Bals Fund and is premiered at Rotterdam IFF 2011 and this film was awarded The NETPAC Award to the best Asian Feature film by a jury from the Network for the promotion of Asian Cinema.