Chinese-American screenwriter and director, he grew up in a small town in Maine (United States). He graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University where he studied drama, directing and design. For ten years, he acquired a solid reputation in the theater world in New York, then moved to Los Angeles to devote himself to cinema. He then signed his first feature film script, Restless, brought to the screen by Gus Van Sant in 2010. He worked for five years writing the script for The Free World, his first film as a director.