Tang Hao

Tang Hao is the blacksmith of Holy Spirit Village, raising his son alone. He is a mountain of a man gone to seed: extraordinarily large and stalwart in build, with messy hair like a bird's nest, an untended beard, and yellow eyes that carry a sleepy, dazed look.

Grief sits at the center of him. His wife is gone, and in her absence he drinks, speaks little, and lets the forge and the boy fend mostly for themselves, a father whose care surfaces in glimpses rather than words. The villagers see a failed, listless smith, and he is exactly that: a big silent man at the edge of the world with nothing visible in his life but his son.