Old Zhou (Zhou Jianguo)
"Stocky, silver crew cut, always in a sleeveless undershirt and house slippers regardless of the season or the hour, reading glasses on a cord around his neck. Carries a thermos of tea everywhere, even to other people's emergencies."
Biography
Zhou spent thirty-one years working the railway lines out of this city, the last decade of it as a dispatcher, before retiring six years ago with a small pension and a great deal of opinions about how things ought to be run. He raised two sons in this same apartment block, both grown and living elsewhere now, and calls them on alternating weeks, mostly to ask when they're visiting. He plays mahjong every Thursday with three men he has known since they were all in their twenties, and has, by his own admission, gotten a little bored in retirement, which is most of why he notices everything that happens in this building.