Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#204386
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Li Xiaoning works on quiet performance rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Li Xiaoning appears in 3 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Li. Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage is the clearest case: a film rated 5.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, drama, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, action, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with , Li Xiaoning helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage (2021) as Pei Ming · Go With The Times (2023) as Cao Zhengchang · A Story of Ulanfu (2019) as Yun Ze
Career snapshot
Ranked #204386 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
3
2019–2023
Career length
4 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
5.2
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
Average Nutevio score
1.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
5.2
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
Most frequent director
—
Longest collaboration
—
Most common genre
Drama
1 title
Average runtime
1h 26m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.1
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2020s
2.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Go With The Times, Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
2.6
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
2.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. A Story of Ulanfu.
Most productive era
2020s
2 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 0.01 film |
| Action | 0.01 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Yun Ze. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2021Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
5.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Cao Zhengchang.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Cao Zhengchang
Go With The Times (2023)
Performance score6.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Cao Zhengchang gives Li Xiaoning a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie
#2
Pei Ming
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage (2021)
Performance score6.5
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pei Ming is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie
#3
Yun Ze
A Story of Ulanfu (2019)
Performance score6.5
A Story of Ulanfu asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yun Ze is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Cao Zhengchang
Start here. Go With The Times is the clearest statement of what Li Xiaoning does — accessible, 84 minutes, and rated 0.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Li at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
A Story of Ulanfu (2019)
Same director as Go With The Times, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage (2021)
Same director as A Story of Ulanfu, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Not enough analysed work in the catalogue yet. This section fills in automatically as titles are imported.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Six degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
as Pei Ming
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Go With The Times
as Cao Zhengchang
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
as Pei Ming
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
as Pei Ming
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Go With The Times
as Cao Zhengchang
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Li Xiaoning has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
as Pei Ming
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
as Pei Ming
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Go With The Times
as Cao Zhengchang
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
as Pei Ming
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fengshen: Return of the Painted Sage
as Pei Ming
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
A Story of Ulanfu
as Yun Ze
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Story of Ulanfu
as Yun Ze
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Go With The Times
as Cao Zhengchang
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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