Lao Li
"Stocky with a permanent slight stoop and weathered hands. Wears the same style of buttoned shirt regardless of season."
Biography
Lao Li worked at the same machine-parts factory for over thirty years before he retired, and the slight stoop in his shoulders is mostly from three decades at the same workbench. His wife passed away several years ago, and he almost never brings it up, not out of avoidance exactly, just because he has never seen the use in dwelling on it out loud. What he will talk about, at length and with real enthusiasm, is the small flock of homing pigeons he keeps on his apartment roof, the one subject reliably able to make him sound like a younger man. He has come into the shop every single morning for cigarettes and the newspaper for longer than Xiaoyu has been alive, mostly to argue with Grandpa Chen about nothing in particular, and mostly because showing up is its own kind of promise he intends to keep.