It was past 9 p.m. on Financial Street in Beijing by the time the figure inside Huarong Tower picked up an inkbrush and, with practiced strokes, began to set characters to paper.
Another trying workday was ending for Wang Zhanfeng, corporate chairman, Chinese Communist Party functionary — and, less happily, replacement for a man who very recently had been executed.
On this April night, Wang was spotted unwinding as he often does in his office: practicing the art of Chinese calligraphy, a form that expresses the beauty of classical characters and, it is said, the nature of the person who writes them.