The Official Jet Li Website

The Story of jetli.com

1998 - 2000: Version 1.0 -- Design Reactor

Many people have asked about the story behind the creation and development of Jet Li's official website. I suppose the story starts back during Jet's publicity for Lethal Weapon 4. After an announcement that he would be making an appearance at a comic book convention at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Patrick Lee, the C.E.O. of Design Reactor and also an exceptionally handsome individual (we are required by contract to say that) and his friend Raffi Kamalian decided to drive down from Berkeley, California to check it out. Patrick and Raffi were both wushu enthusiasts and, in fact, most of the people who worked at Design Reactor met through a common involvment in wushu.

At the appearance in L.A. Patrick and Raffi saw a friend of theirs, Coach Debbie Chen from the National Wushu Training Center whom they had told about the appearance. She was also an old acquaintence of Jet's so had dropped by to say hello. While speaking with her she introduced them to Jet's publicist at the time, Sandy Rice. Sandy and Patrick exchanged business cards and upon returning to Berkeley he worked to set up a meeting with her to find out the possibility of doing Jet's website.

After a short period of time a meeting was set up. Beaver (Jet's assistant) and Sandy agreed to meet with Patrick, Senh (Creative Director at Design Reactor) and Mark (Senior Produer at Design Reactor) and hear their proposal. Apparently they liked what they heard because they eventually agreet to have Design Reactor design and maintain Jet's new official website.

The design process was quite laborious. It took almost 5 months to come up with a concept and it wasn't until a brainstorming meeting in L.A. between several of Jet's and DR's people that they decided on the action verb concept. For those of you who were not able to visit the old site, it was built around different verbs, each one representing a section of the site. "Visualize, meditate, explore, discover, etc." It was also built around a yin-yang motife. Jet wanted the site not to just provide information but also to teach people deeper ideas about life, martial arts and the universe.

The site launched in March of 1999 to much critical (and fan) acclaim. Shortly thereafter Mark took over webmastering duties from Patrick who had his hands full running the company. Over the course of the next year the site developed, adding technologies such as message boards, polls and web cards, while adding to its increasingly large store-house of Jet-provided content.

2000 - 2001: Version 2.0 -- Rotten Tomatoes

In the beginning of 2000 Design Reactor moved offices from Berkeley to Emeryville, California and in the spring decided to change the focus of their company. No longer content with producing sites for other companies, they wanted to work on a project of their own. Senh, one of the original founders of Design Reactor had gone off the year before the develop his idea of a website that consolidates reviews on movies. His site had become a great success within many industry circles and the team at Design Reactor saw great potential in developing it to the next level. They gave their company identity to a design firm in the San Jose area as well as all their work and began full-time development of Rotten Tomatoes. I said they gave all their projects to the new Design Reactor. Well, that's not entirely true. They kept the one site they felt very passionate about, The Official Jet Li Website. Mark stayed on as webmaster for the site and began preparations in late summer for a major redesign.

In early 2001 Rotten Tomatoes realized that they needed to focus their energies on their core business more and, as difficult as it was, had to let the Jet site go from their project list. Things worked out for the best, however, and Mark stopped work for Rotten Tomatoes and in March of 2001 moved to L.A. to work for Jet full-time as the webmaster for his site. The new jetli.com site launched in May of 2001 and incorporated many new features including a multi-language forum and the beginning of our Global Fan Network.

2002 - 2004: Version 3.0 -- Jet Returns to China

Towards the end of 2003 Jet and his family decided to relocate to China and Mark, once again, returned to work for Rotten Tomatoes where he continues to maintain and update jetli.com. The 3rd relaunch of jetli.com came about in late 2004 and incorporated a new subject-based method of organizing the massive content on the website. For a while the website experienced a slight lull in activity due to Mark's increased duties at his job, the period of adjustment for Jason, Jet's new assistant, and the distance between China and the U.S.A.

2005 - 2006: Version 4.0 -- Mark in China

During a trip to China in the summer of 2005 Mark was offered a contract to move to Shanghai and develop the Hong Kong website for Jet's then-upcoming movie "Fearless", as well as continue work on jetli.com. In addition he was also hired to develop websites for Jet's non-profit foundations both in the U.S., Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Version 4.0 of jetli.com was launched in the summer of 2006 and incorporated a greater ease of navigation and more intuitive user interface design. After Mark’s contract completed in July 2006 he stayed in Shanghai to study wushu, Chinese language and continued helping with jetli.com.

2007: Future Plans

There are a lot of things in the works for Jet’s website. In the beginning of 2007 Mark moved to Hong Kong to develop a new company with his old Rotten Tomatoes buddies Pat and Stephen. This new company will work with Jet Li to help develop aspects of his website to provide greater resources to his fans. These include things like higher functionality of Jet’s new personal blog, a bilingual interface in Chinese and English, and a whole new set of features for jetli.com users including a new forum system, blogs, file uploads, user photo galleries and much more!

As Jet Li’s website continues to develop we hope that you will continue to support and participate in our special online community. We appreciate your patronage of jetli.com and hope that your experiences here provide you with a positive added value in your life.

return to top