Qi poses for a photo shoot with his work City Big Bang at the Pacific Place in Hong Kong.[Photo provided to China Daily]

However, Qi insists that he has always been a man of the people, preferring to create art for the street rather than a studio because "street art is for everyone, it aims to be accessible."

And though he received an elite education, he had far from a privileged upbringing. He grew up in the remote northeastern province of Heilongjiang, only moving to Beijing after winning a place at the academy.

It was soon after beginning his studies at the academy that Qi discovered the work of the artist who would change his life. A teacher showed Qi and his classmates images of some 3-D sidewalk chalk art by Julien Beever, and he was transfixed by it.

"We had never seen anything like that art form in China before. We thought it was unimaginable," he says.

For the next 10 years, Qi devoted himself to mastering the reverse-perspective style able to create the mind-bending optical illusions of 3-D art, and he began to take the form to a new level in terms of scale and ambition.

From 2010 to 2011, Qi broke the Guinness World Record for the largest 3-D mural four times, his enormous works reportedly inducing vertigo in some viewers.