Li Lu

Li Lu (born April 6, 1966) is a Chinese-born American investment banker, investor and hedge fund manager. He is the founder and Chairman of Himalaya Capital Management. He was one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, an experience he recounted in a 1990 book, Moving the Mountain: My Life in China, that was the basis of a 1994 documentary by Michael Apted.

Early Life & Protests

Li Lu was born and grew up in Tangshan, China. He was a survivor of 1976 Tangshan earthquake. In 1985, he went to Nanjing University, majored in Physics but later transferred to Economics. In 1989, he participated in the Tiananmen Square student protests and became one of the student leaders. He helped organize the students and participated in a hunger strike. He fled the PRC through Operation Yellowbird.

After the crackdown on the movement, he left China and went to study at Columbia University. In 1990, he published a book about his experience in China titled Moving the Mountain: My Life in China (ISBN 0-399-13545-6). The book was the basis of a 1994 feature-film documentary, Moving the Mountain, produced by Trudie Styler and directed by Michael Apted, which probed the origins of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and the consequences of the movement in the lives of several of the movement's student leaders.