~BASICS~
Character's Name: Qin Meixiu
Nicknames: Mei
Character's Birthdate and Age: November 30th, 32 years old
Place of Birth: Hong Kong
Current Residence: Santa Monica
Occupation: Leader of the Black Dragons, the Triad's L.A. branch
Education: Bachelor of Laws from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris
Hobbies: Reading, skiing, running, collecting cars and driving them, high-stakes gambling, pool, mahjong
~APPEARANCE~
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5'4"
Physical Description: Slender figured, almond eyed and fair skinned with straight long black hair and plump lips. Mei is definitely vain when it comes to her appearance, and is loathe to be seen looking anything less than perfectly put together.
Distinguishing Features: None, she's flawless.
Character Model: Fan Bingbing
~IN DEPTH~
Personality: Mei is generally composed, level-headed and decisive. Highly ambitious and competitive, she's known as being ruthlessly efficient, which is practically a requirement to exist in her world. She's no sociopathic killer or unfeeling ice queen, she simply has no qualms about doing whatever she feels is necessary in any given situation, and her ability to compartmentalize things within her mind helps greatly in terms of minimizing guilt.
With her loved ones, which are admittedly few and far between outside of her own immediate family, she is in many aspects an entirely different person. Warm, caring, nurturing and most of all, staunchly loyal. There's nothing that she wouldn't do for those who are dear to her, and God help anyone who dares to so much as look at any of them the wrong way.
History: Mei was born in Hong Kong, where she spent her early childhood with her family, who were unfortunately caught on the wrong side of the region's severe income inequality. She was too young to remember all of it, but her parents struggled mightily to keep her and her elder brother fed while they rented an apartment that couldn't be considered much more than a living cubicle.
It wasn't until she got a bit older that things started to turn around for them when her father got a new job, something to do with construction as far as the family knew, although he had to work long and sometimes very unusual hours. The change of fortune was somewhat gradual at first, enough that they could afford some actually decent living conditions, but then after about a year or so they suddenly relocated to one of Hong Kong's nicest and most expensive districts, into a loft so spacious that Mei couldn't even have imagined such a place beforehand. It did eventually get her wondering, though.
From then on, she led a relatively normal, albeit quite privileged life, focusing mainly on her studies while doing the things that kids do. Her last two years of high school were completed in Los Angeles, the entire family having moved there due to her father receiving a big promotion at work. Mei didn't have much trouble adapting and loved her new life in the States, although this was also the time where she began spotting the holes in her father's story.
At school, she'd always had a knack for doing meticulous research and solving problems, so it didn't take long once she'd caught the trail for her to unravel the whole story. When she confronted her father, however, she wasn't horrified or angry. To her, it made sense for him to have done the things that he did, and she was extremely thankful. Mei had always held a certain admiration for the man, but this revelation transformed him into her idol, and she wanted nothing more than to join him. No matter how many arguments she presented, though, he categorically refused, and when the girl wouldn't relent, she was shipped off to complete her studies across the Atlantic in France.
When she finally returned with her degree in 2002, it was just in time to witness her father being arrested, a consequence of one of the most elaborate stings in police history. The Black Dragons were shattered in one fell swoop, its key leaders facing bullet-proof charges while the members who managed to escape conviction scattered to the winds. For Mei and her family, it also meant the possibility of losing everything.
When he had no other options, knowing that his son didn't possess the appropriate constitution for this type of business, that was finally when Mei's father enlisted her help. The plan was only for her to get rid of certain evidence and to move some funds around before they got frozen to ensure that she, her mother and brother would be well taken care of, but she had greater plans. Instead she took a gamble on herself, using the contacts that she'd acquired while destroying evidence and most of her family's money to rebuild the Dragons. She started small, but instead of trying to compete with every single other gang at once like her predecessors had done, she formed beneficial alliances or agreements with some of the street level gangs to compete against the main players. Within only a few years, the Dragons had not only taken back what once belonged to them, but even managed to capture much of the Yakuza's territory.
On top of operating many legitimate businesses, the Dragons also dealt in the drug trade, weapons trafficking, counterfeit art, prostitution, protection, illegal gambling, violence of all sorts and more, although they abstained from the trafficking of humans. Mei still had some recollection of her living conditions as a child, and she refused to sentence anyone who didn't deserve it to such a life or worse, even if it meant losing a great deal of potential profit.
Her own hands were kept entirely clean of any wrongdoing, of course, and she even tried to build herself a concurrent normal life like her father had done, only she wasn't nearly as successful. Her marriage was a short-lived disaster, although she could never regret it, since it did leave her with a wonderful baby boy who immediately became the center of her world.
When the outbreak struck, Mei was safely barricaded inside of her mansion, but unfortunately Blake - now 6 years old - had left to go camping with her ex-husband for a few days. Days of putting all of her vast resources towards finding or contacting them turned into weeks until Blake finally turned up, showing up with his father at the downtown penthouse that Mei owned. A couple of her people had been posted there just in case, and unfortunately they had to put down Blacke's father who'd been infected while attempting to get the boy to safety. Leaving the relative safety of her home, Mei rushed to go get her son, thankfully reaching him before the building was overrun by one of the rioting mobs rampaging through the city, but the trip back to the mansion didn't quite go as planned. Slow moving traffic turned into a jam that refused to budge, and then it suddenly went from bad to incredibly worse as total pandemonium ensued...
Likes: Spending time with her son, romanticized gangster films, fine dining, drinking, massages, designer clothes and jewelry, kyara incense, silk sheets, long baths, skinny dipping, quiet, the night
Dislikes: Betrayal, disrespect, cowards, feeling inept, failing, less than ideal living conditions, coffee, loud grating noises, the cold, feeling dirty or unkempt
O/O's Find out if you dare.
