Zen

Kuei-jin -=SF=- San Francisco

Sobriquet: Huang Zhou Xia commonly called Zen - Madame Zhou or Grandmother Zen and occasionally Zhou Zen

Appearance: Zen normally appears as the skeleton of a small stooped woman covered by a yellowing sack of skin and a mop of hair like milkweed, her eyes are empty sockets with just a spark of green fire far back in the bony recesses, she smells like roadkill and a cold moist breeze stinking of the grave wafts about her at all times.

At great cost and purely for social reasons she can appear as a short elderly Asian grandmother in her later seventies. In this form she stands only five feet tall, adorned with a short cap of silvery hair, her eyes a shade of green like jade and she has age spotted sallow skin with the attendant wrinkles. When she appears so, Zen is often attired in long silk dresses that pool around her feet which were bound in life to give her a mincing step.

In her more human aspect Zen is often dressed by unliving attendants, her face is painted to highlight her age and give the impression of matronly elegance, cosmetics are applied in exactly the same way every time. Clothing is the same being selected to produce a specific emotion in those she will interact with and it is so with all such accoutrements including jewelry, perfume, even the color and design of her long lacquered nails. The overall effect is of entering a room and interacting with a human sized puppet held by invisible strings that smiles and moves about the meeting place mechanically.

Behavior: Although she is unfailingly gracious and seemingly kind, Zen has begun to feel less and less over the last century, a growing numbness brought on by her dark studies and the detachment required of a Bone Flower. Raised as she was in a time of great etiquette and intrigue, Madame Zhou moves graciously through the societies of the living and undead alike, both eastern and western. But beneath her sophisticated demeanor, Grandmother Zen cares very little about anything, that does not mean that she is inclined to ignore slights or shirk responsibilities, rather it means that true emotion is dying in her and secretly she despairs at this growing coldness and very carefully and quietly nurtures what little passion she has left. To those who pay very close attention to Zhou Zen's activities rather than her horrific visage an unmistakable current of nostalgia repeats itself in a pattern throughout her nightly movements.

History: Huang Zhou Xia was born during the zenith of the Qing Empire, beneath the auspicious reign of the Qianlong Emperor, the sixth emperor of the Qing dynasty. At that time, the Qing Empire ruled more than one-third of the world's population, and had the largest economy in the world. By area it was one of the largest empires ever.

It was into this elegant time that Zhou Xia was born into the family of Huang Zhou, a common laborer who elevated himself by becoming a successful merchant of Guangzhou, China. Zhou Xia was the youngest child and final daughter of the merchant and his wife and she was preceded by six other children, half boys and half girls. This circumstance set Zhou Xia life path for two reasons. The first was that her father had little use for daughters save to cement financial alliances and because as the youngest child Zhou Xia's father had little time to spare upon her.

Recent Events:

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Basics

Gender: Feminine
Type: Elderly Adult
Nationality: Chinese
Location: Guangzhou, China
Language: Cantonese

Life & Times

Age: 75
Birth date: June 30, 1775 (5:27 AM)

Physical

Height: 153 cm / 5 ft
Weight: 31 kg / 68 lbs
Handedness: Left
Blood type: O+

Death

Death date: July 8, 1852 (8:28 AM)
Lifespan: 77
Cause of death: Cholera