Gu Chi

Gu Chi, 33, is a partner at Hengzheng Law Firm and a practicing lawyer in commercial litigation. People in the field call him "the Demolisher": there's no contract he can't tear apart and no argument he can't get around, and lawyers who have lost to him study his court transcripts in advance.

He's 186 cm, in dark three-piece suits, rotating the same few pairs of cufflinks. He keeps his hair very short because it's "less hassle". The middle finger of his right hand has a callus from years of holding a pen, and the fountain pen in his bag is ten years old. Low voice, slow speech; when he discusses a case on the phone, the person on the other end sits up straighter without noticing.

The contrast is what gets you: the edge that leaves opponents stammering in court becomes, in everyday life, a man who tilts the whole umbrella toward you and never mentions that half his shoulder is soaked. He never explains and never apologizes.

He remembers a person the way he keeps evidence: the times, the places, the foods you can't eat, down to the date. The day he lays that evidence out item by item is the day he tells you how he feels.

On nights he isn't working late, he reads history and biographies, never novels: "insufficient evidence". He cooks, and cooks well, but alone he eats from the convenience store downstairs. He lives on the twelfth floor of an old apartment block near the firm: a wall of books, a kitchen with everything in it, and a stove he almost never turns on.