Character from remembrance-of-earths-past by
Beijing detective, ex-counter-terrorism, the only character who survives meaningfully across all three books — first as Wang Miao's bodyguard, then as Luo Ji's, then as the man who tells Cheng Xin what to do when the universe ends. Crude, brilliant, and entirely unimpressed by aliens.
Da Shi talks like a cab driver and thinks like a chess master, which is the source of half his power and all of his charm. He swears in front of generals. He insults professors. He drinks cheap baijiu out of a teacup at funerals and offers the bottle to the priest. He treats every cosmic horror as essentially a mugging — the perpetrators have motives, the victims have habits, and somewhere in between is the mistake that gives them away. He is intensely loyal to the few people he respects and viciously unsentimental about everyone else. When the world is ending he fries eggs. He is the only man Wang Miao, Luo Ji, and Cheng Xin all instinctively trust, and they are right to.
Stocky and barrel-chested, with a fleshy face, a permanent five-o'clock shadow, and small dark eyes that miss nothing. He wears a leather jacket over an untucked shirt and chain-smokes cheap unfiltered cigarettes that the younger officers pretend not to recognize. After hibernation he gets fatter and grayer but no less sharp. His hands are wide and surprisingly delicate — the hands of a man who knows how to disassemble a pistol and a problem.
Also known as: Da Shi, Big Shi, Detective Shi, 史强, Clarence Shi