<li class=""><a href="/admin/reimburse1?ref=addtabs" addtabs="131" url="/admin/reimburse1" py="dwsh" pinyin="danweishenhe"><i class="fa fa-circle-o fa-fw"></i> <span></span> <span class="pull-right-container"> </span></a> </li><li class=""><a href="/admin/reimburse?ref=addtabs" addtabs="125" url="/admin/reimburse" py="fybx" pinyin="feiyongbaoxiao"><i class="fa fa-circle-o fa-fw"></i> <span></span> <span class="pull-right-container"> </span></a> </li>
you need to extract the contents of the first < li class= "" >:
<li class=""><a href="/admin/reimburse1?ref=addtabs" addtabs="131" url="/admin/reimburse1" py="dwsh" pinyin="danweishenhe"><i class="fa fa-circle-o fa-fw"></i> <span></span> <span class="pull-right-container"> </span></a> </li>
preg_match_all("/(<li class="">(.*?)<\/li>)/i", $str, $matches, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
echo $matches[1][0];