Wang Yao
Posts : 57
Join date : 2012-01-30
Location : Floor 8, Flat 2
 | Subject: Wang Yao // People's Republic of China  Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:13 pm | |
| Wang Yao
Name: Wang Yao
Age: 121
Birthday: 10th October
Country of Origin: China
Floor in the building: 8
How long they've lived in the building: (Original) 104 years
Job: Antique shop owner
Powers: Immortality and Memory Wipe
Appearance: Yao stands at around 5’4” and has a slight build. He has long, black hair which he keeps tied in a ponytail most of the time, and he has large, dark brown eyes. He looks about 21, and he’s looked that way for 100 years. His long hair and slender body often lead people to believe he is a woman, a misconception that gets quite irritating after about half a century.
He keeps as much of himself covered as possible, wearing long sleeves even on the hottest days of the year, because living 121 years and fighting in two wars gets you your fair share of scars; scars that never heal completely and beg questions. At work he wears traditional Chinese clothing, but at home he tends to wear t-shirts, hoodies and sweatpants for the sake of comfort. Most of the smart looking clothes he owns are knock-offs of some kind.
Personality: Everything considered, Yao is actually a pretty cheerful sort of person. Having lost his family when he was quite young, and never having had any children or younger siblings to help look after or raise, he always seeks to be a father figure (or mainly an older brother figure considering his appearance), wanting to help out those younger than him (which is basically everyone) and impart his worldly wisdom, whether they want it or not.
It’s impossible to live as long as Yao has and not to reminisce about how things once were and what he’s gained and lost over the years, which can make him quite morose at times. He is particularly quiet and grumpy on nostalgic days, which is a shock to those who are used to his normally rather cheerful behaviour. He chooses to tackle his sadness, rather than by repressing the sad memories he has, by remembering the good times fondly. He reasons that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, and though he has lost a lot in 121 years, he has also experienced much love.
He’s also quite traditional in most ways; having lived such a long time, he’s had time to think over many things and reconsider his stance on certain issues, and in some ways he’s quite liberal. However, he maintains that culturally the world is going down the pan; “Whatever happened,” he’ll ask, “To the days when Chinese opera was the height of entertainment? And what the hell is wrong with how young people dress nowadays? Nobody wants to see your midriff!” He may look in his early 20s, but he thinks and acts like an old man. He’s also not particularly keen on too much physical contact; he certainly does not like being hugged by people he does not consider close enough to be hugged, and still frowns on public displays of affection. Worse still are public displays of emotion; nothing makes him more awkward than someone crying in front of him, particularly someone he doesn’t know very well.
His grandparents were quite blunt and to the point, a trait which he too possessed when he was younger, but having spent the vast majority of his life in England, he’s developed quite English mannerisms, being mostly soft-spoken, polite and diplomatic. He is very concerned about reputation and 'saving face'; he does not like to be embarrassed or made to look bad by himself or others. He can easily use his powers to blank a person's memory of any discrepancy on his part, but he does not use his power as lightly as he used to, as he is sure now that playing with someone's memory and forcing them to black out must cause some serious brain damage if done too often.
Likes:
• Tea (Specifically Chinese tea. His favourite is Jasmine)
• Benbang (Traditional Shanghai style) Cuisine
• Old things (This includes clothes, art, literature, music, theatre, ways of life and government)
• Pandas
• ‘Cute’ things
• Bright colours (His favourites are red and gold)
• Eating
Dislikes:
• Having his hair cut short (Had to have this done twice for the army; never again)
• Being mistaken for a woman
• Being ID’d when he tries to buy alcohol
• Kids these days (note: Yao has disliked ‘kids these days’ since 1920)
• Modern rubbish
• Dairy products
• Not being able to die
Any other information: Though he knows it’s irrational to have a fear of drowning seeing as he’s immortal, seeing as his father died that way, and he’s already drowned once, he is quite wary of large bodies of water and does not like swimming.
Having got all of his news about developments in China throughout the 20th Century via Western media, Yao has a rather capitalist outlook, and though he has grown to support certain liberal and socialist ideals, he remains staunchly opposed to Communism.
History: Wang Yao was born in Shanghai in 1891. His father was a poor seaman who often traded with British merchants, selling tea and Chinese herbs. Once offered a new life in London, presented as an opportunity for a better quality of life and higher wages, Yao’s father sailed with his family (and a dozen or so others) to Britain in 1901. It was hardly the idyll he had been expecting from his new employer’s descriptions, and he was forced to work long hours at the dock, not earning much more than he had in Shanghai and living in accommodation hardly bigger or more sanitary than that they’d left behind. In early 1902, Yao’s mother contracted tuberculosis and died, leaving him to look after their home, the cleaning, the cooking and his ailing grandparents by himself while his father was at work.
Their luck began to turn, as Yao’s father managed to save enough money to eventually open a Chinese grocery shop in Pennyfields, where the majority of the Chinese population of London lived at that time. By 1908, the Wang family was rich enough to move away from the squalor and segregation of Poplar, to a relatively nicer home in North London. However, soon after the move both Yao’s grandparents died, and in 1911 his father did too, having drowned in the Thames. So at the age of 19 he was left alone to manage his father’s business and take care of himself. Luckily the shop remained successful even after Mr Wang’s death, and Yao had inherited enough money from his father and his grandparents to support himself financially for a long time.
The first lightning strike occurred in 1912, on the very spot it hit a second time 100 years later. Back then it was Yao’s building, a grand, old Georgian house, divided into generously sized flats, with a shop on one side of the building and a coffee house on the other. The morning after the lightning storm, everyone in his building seemed to have miraculous powers; the ability to levitate, or superhuman strength. Some had even transformed their physical appearance. Of course, it wasn’t long until quack physicians and psychiatrists were called in to explain this miraculous event. Residents were examined and taken away to hospitals and asylums. Yao, however, seemed to have been unaffected by all of this. He didn’t feel or look any different, and he couldn’t do anything he hadn’t been able to do before as far as he could tell (apart from pay a lower rent on his flat, as the rates for his building decreased incredibly as the other tenants were forced out due to ‘sudden madness’ or whatever it was they called it, destroying the building’s reputation. Not to mention damage from the storm). That was until one day a few months later, when he suffered a fall one night that should have killed him. Though he was unconscious for some time, he did not seem badly injured when he woke up; in fact, his wounds had almost completely healed. He put it down to luck, but similar incidents proved him wrong; he drowned and was pulled from the water by a passer by, half-dead, but recovered within an hour. He was caught in a fire, trapped in a burning building, fell unconscious from inhaling smoke, but woke up with nothing but a few burns. He tested his luck, jumping from the tallest building he could find, taking an overdose of opium, even stabbing himself through the heart. Nothing would kill him. He was immortal. This is obviously a lot for anyone to take in, but he kept it quiet, and continued life as normal, hoping that he would find some way to reverse the effect of the lightning storm (Standing on the roof in the middle of a lightning storm apparently didn’t help).
In 1916, Yao was conscripted to the British army, leaving his father’s business in the hands of an employee unfit for service. He was reluctant to go, but he wasn’t scared, knowing he couldn’t die. Throughout the war, he was shot no less than twenty times, and received countless serious wounds from shrapnel. Each wound that should have killed him healed within days to the astonishment of medics and fellow soldiers. They called him lucky, the man with nine lives, asked him if it was some ancient Chinese magic or wizardry keeping him alive. He didn’t feel lucky at all though. Though nothing could kill him, each shot and scar felt as painful and real as if he really were dying, and several times he prayed he could. But every time he healed at an incredible speed and was sent to the front to get shot at again, to come to the brink of death again. But worse than the recurring, unbearable physical pain was the guilt; every day his fellow soldiers were dying around him in their hundreds, their thousands. They had families, girlfriends, fiancées, wives, children; they had everything to live for. Yao had lost his family and he had no loved ones, so why was he still alive while all the other young men dropped like flies? It felt incredibly cruel, as if the universe were playing game with him.
Having been forced to survive through the First World War, it didn’t feel long at all before Britain declared war on Germany again, and Yao was called once more to the front. He couldn’t bear to befriend anyone, because he knew it wouldn’t be long until they died, and he’d have to bare the personal pain of their loss. He could almost numb himself to seeing anonymous men around him dying, not to the death of those close to him. It became hard for him to become close with anyone in any way, as he knew no matter how long they lived, he would outlive them, watch them die, for years after the War. Then again, making friends when you don’t age is a challenge in itself; you can only put it down to a baby face and lucky genes for so long before people start wondering and asking questions. This is where Yao’s other power comes in handy; like his immortality, he found out about his ability to wipe memory by accident. Once, he accidentally let slip about his immortality to a colleague. Obviously he wouldn’t believe him and would think him mad, so he regretted it instantly, wishing to himself that by some stroke of luck his colleague would somehow forget he said it. And somehow he did; the man blacked out all of a sudden, and when he awoke he remembered nothing of their previous conversation. Though he at first put it down to chance, a few similar incidents occurred in the proceeding weeks. He had the idea to try it on himself; if he could forget his loved ones, he could live without the pain of their loss. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work like that. He could only erase others’ memories. This did prove useful though, as relationships that had gone on too long could be erased at a moment’s notice.
Over the years he fell in love a couple of times, but he never let affairs last too long, erasing himself from his partner’s consciousness after a few months or a year; it was kinder to let them move on free of any left over emotions so that they could find lovers they could grow old and die with, rather than to cling onto them and watch them wither away while his life relentlessly continued, not aging a single day.
Pennyfields started to decline over the decades, and it was difficult to run a business from the other side of London, so in 1950 he sold his father’s shop to developers and bought up the store next to his building. There wasn’t much call for Chinese groceries in this area of London, but there were people around with enough money to fork out for pretty, useless things, and over the years Yao had acquired quite a few of these. So he turned the shop into an antique shop, specialising in Chinese artefacts. He had old vases and tea sets and paintings that had belonged to his father and grandparents, and the Chinese population of Pennyfields and Limehouse were selling up their old junk and moving to the West End, so he bought their valuables dirt cheap, cleaned them up, and sold them to Brits with more money than sense at great profit.
He continued to live his quiet life in the same building he’d lived in since he was 17, erasing memories here and there when he had to, renewing his lease with each new landlord that came by, and making a tidy living from his shop. But fifteen years ago he was evicted as his landlord had sold the building to developers. Despite protests over the legality of this, Yao was forced out and, finding nowhere nearby he could afford, was forced to live in the storage room above his shop for 18 months as his old home was torn down and a new block of flats built in its place. The new building was clean and quite modern, but the flats were smaller and had none of the character and connection to the past of the old place. Nevertheless, Yao was sick of sleeping in the gloomy, dusty storage room, and so he rented a flat on the eighth floor of the new building where his old home stood, where he lives to this day.
Details of their powers:
• Immortality: Just because Yao is immortal doesn’t mean that he’s invulnerable; he can sustain an injury, feel pain, be marked, bruised and scarred, but he simply cannot die from it. He can also become ill; he will experience all the normal symptoms as a normal person would, but it won’t cause him to die. How long it takes him to heal varies depending on the severity of the wound, but he heals far quicker than mortals, with a paper cut or a graze disappearing in seconds, and bullet wounds and deep cuts mending in a matter of days. His immortality also means he does not age; though he may talk and think like an OAP most of the time, he doesn’t look a day older than he did when he was struck by lightning.
• Memory wipe: As previously mentioned, Yao can only wipe others’ memory, not his own. He does this simply by willing them to forget something, or someone. Doing this causes the person it is being used on to black out temporarily, the length of time they are unconscious depending on how much Yao is making them forget. Erasing a lover’s memory of their relationship can knock them out cold for a few days, but making someone forget something like a slip of the tongue may take only a couple of minutes. He cannot use this power on more than one person at once, so he tries to use it in privacy, one person at a time.
RP Sample:
(Trigger warning: Self harm/attempted suicide)
Yao knew the lightning bolt was coming. The storm that night stirred the same feelings in him that night as the first one had exactly one hundred years ago. It was the same bristling feeling, hairs pricking up on the back of his neck, a cool shiver running down his spine. The thunder clapped too loudly, and the lightning shone too bright. He knew that it would happen again, that the same lightning would strike a second time, and that once again this building would be full of screams as people discovered their freakish new powers. That night a century ago came back to him so clearly.
He did not move from his bed, simply lying stock still, eyes closed, not even flinching as the thunder seemed to roar right next to his window. He wasn’t scared. He was hopeful. If it was the same storm returned, perhaps it had come to relieve him the burden of his immortality. Maybe being struck by the same bolt a second time would reverse the effect of the first, and he would become mortal again and he could die. He could finally end this, leave this world behind, forget all the woes and troubles of his waking days and sleep for eternity like all the other lucky people in the world. He was so ready to die.
The lightning bolt flashed, lighting his room a cold bluish white, and it sounded like their building was going to be brought down by the very sound of the thunder. It stopped as quickly as it had started, and soon the thunder could be heard rumbling far in the distance. Gracefield House was left in peace.
Yao wasn’t dead. No, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t die, did it? He just needed to test, to see if his powers were still there, or if he could finally go in peace. Pushing the covers off him, he climbed out of bed and padded wordlessly to his kitchen. He took a knife from his knife block. Large. Sharp. Glinting orange for a moment as it caught the light of a streetlamp outside. He drew the blade across his left palm in one swift motion, slicing open the flesh. He didn’t even wince at the pain; he’d felt so much worse. He watched the blood slowly ooze from the wound in the semi-darkness, black on grey. The cut wasn’t deep, and if he still had his powers, it should begin to heal within a few minutes. He watched it intensely, willing it to stay open. But it didn’t. Not a minute had passed before the skin and the nerves began to mend themselves back together, and in five he was whole again.
He’d been foolish to hope, he knew he had. As if the lightning was sentient, as if it had felt remorse for the pain it had inflicted on him, and would now relieve him of the burden of immortality. The new strike had changed nothing. This was forever, and he’d accepted that already. Or he thought he had, but clearly he was still living under the deranged impression that he could one day die. He had to let go; he was going to keep living, no matter how tired and old and broken he felt.
Wiping the spilt blood from his hand with a piece of kitchen towel he went back to bed, though he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He held his healed hand before him and regarded it sullenly. The knife had left a scar, but it was just one of many now. It was meaningless and the pain was dull. He felt morose and sorry for himself, but he knew the morning would bring whole new, unavoidable issues from all the other tenants. He should be there for them, he thought. They should be fine as long as they didn’t alert the authorities to this strange new development as the last bunch of idiots had, but they might need help or guidance all the same. For a moment, he hoped that someone else in the building besides him had been inflicted with the curse of immortality; another person to spend eternity with, someone who he wouldn’t outlive, somebody who knew his pain. But he quickly chided himself for it; he wouldn’t want to wish this life on anyone, no matter how lonely he felt. He dropped his hand to his side on the bed and sighed tiredly, watching the ceiling swirl dark patterns above him. It was going to be a very long day, he could tell.
~OOC~
Name: Katy
Timezone/Country: GMT
Age: 19
A little about yourself: I study German and Chinese at university and I’m a massive dork.
Anything Else?: This turned out way more depressing than I thought it would be. Turns out immortality sucks. And please tell me if there's anything in here you'd like me to change regarding the history of the building? Also, yellow.
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