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Zhiheng Shanghai Law Firm

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Introduction

If one were to call this essay an autobiography, I would feel deeply unworthy. I have neither performed any great deeds nor reached the age of sixty; therefore, I dare not—and should not—take up the pen. If you treat it as a brief summation of your own life, picking up the pen and dipping it in memories actually feels quite meaningful. After all, my own self is woven into every line; so I might as well let go and relax, choosing only those quiet late-night hours when my mind is at peace to write. At times like these, it’s hard to avoid being a bit overly sentimental; please forgive any awkwardness and take it with a smile.

Left home at a young age

I originally came from an engineering background. Back then, I chose atmospheric science as my college major, thinking that after graduation I could work at the meteorological bureau—a relatively quiet and unglamorous government office—recording temperature and wind direction, while also reading books and playing the piano, doing whatever I enjoyed. I figured that would be a pretty pleasant life. Later, due to a change in my major, I ended up studying remote sensing, and after graduation, I felt completely at a loss.

The housekeeper at home suggested, “Why don’t you study law?” I recalled filling out my college application for the gaokao—only the medical school choice was made by me. I then convinced myself that medicine mends the human body, while law mends social relationships; in a way, they both serve a similar purpose. The decision was made quickly, and she subsequently went on to study intellectual property law at Renmin University of China.

While I was at Renmin University, my high school class monitor—who also used to sit in front of me—was pursuing a master’s degree in chemistry there. Together with my new classmates and old friends, I enjoyed many happy moments at Renmin University. When I was studying engineering, I wasn’t very diligent, but when I started law school, I was full of enthusiasm. Whenever I can snag a seat in the front row, I always sit there for class. The Chinese People’s University is full of talented individuals; while I wouldn’t claim to be exceptionally outstanding, I did manage to complete my studies within the scope of my abilities.

If you call it fate playing tricks on people, I’ve certainly been toyed with by destiny many times—this time hardly counts. Logically speaking, since “a son should not travel far when his parents are still alive,” I ought to have stayed by my parents’ side. But back in my hometown, there’s an unwritten rule: the boys go out to make their way in the world, while the girls stay close by. Of course, the best places to make your mark are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen—your parents can really brag about it when they’re out socializing.

So whether you stay in Northeast China or leave, everything has its pros and cons. Before the Spring Festival of the Year of the Snake (Yisi), I returned to Beijing for a meal with my old friend, Judge Sun. Judge Sun is from my hometown—our homes are just a twenty-minute drive apart. We once interned together at the court, hit it off right away, and have kept in touch ever since.

We were old friends catching up, chatting happily about everyday family matters. My parents are getting older, and I’m not by their side. Every time I come home for the New Year, I see more gray hairs on their heads. Although we video call often, it’s still hard to really see how they’re doing. After a week of drinking, with our feelings running deep, I kept muttering to myself, “What are we even doing? What are we even doing?”

“This year when I went home, my father remarked that after you left for the college entrance exam at eighteen, you’re now thirty-six—half your life spent at home, half spent away.”

When I was young and naive, I was solely focused on studying away from home. Not to mention my academic performance, the number of times I returned home grew fewer and fewer. But I don’t often feel homesick; I always think it’s still too early to regret, and that now is the perfect time to strive.Job transitions

My job-hunting journey has by no means been smooth sailing, and I’ve encountered all sorts of people along the way. As I write this, one by one, faces emerge in my mind—some whose names I can no longer recall, some whose features have grown hazy. Some fill me with gratitude, others with longing; some evoke wonder, while others still make my blood boil.

When I first entered the profession, I focused on trademark and copyright matters. My supervisor was a truly kind and rare person—so much so that even now, I think of her as such. Since her WeChat profile picture is a whale, I’ll call her “Sister Whale.” Sister Whale used to be a lawyer, but later focused on non-litigation work and became a key player at a consulting firm. At home, she has her husband, children, and mother-in-law to take care of; in the office, there’s one man and four women. With so much on her plate, she always walks with a brisk, energetic stride.

Listening to her, every morning she’s overwhelmed by three big boxes of jewelry and doesn’t know how to choose which one to wear. Since I’m the only man in the department, Sister Whale always pushes me to take the lead in public-facing tasks, and she’s even turned my naturally shy self into the company’s runner-up speaker. At the weekly morning meeting, she always emphasizes that she doesn’t want to scold or lose her temper—yet she inevitably lets off a mild blast, so gentle that we can’t even feel scared. Then, during lunch break, the sisters are all giggling and joking together again.

We didn’t work together for very long—just about two years, all told. In the end, Sister Whale, after much deliberation, chose the career path she really wanted and left this company to work for a foreign‑owned enterprise.

Seven years later, she came to Shanghai on a business trip, and I invited her to have dinner. When she walked in, she kept apologizing for being late, but I couldn’t respond—because I was watching her. I was checking whether her voice had changed, whether her hair had changed, whether her eyes had changed, and whether her movements had changed. Has she changed? Even the tone and gestures she used when stepping in to apologize were exactly the same as seven years ago.

She’s looking at me too; she smiles, but I can’t quite manage to smile naturally. I have already traveled back in time to the past and across space to Beijing; at this moment, I am no longer in present-day Shanghai. After we sat down, we began to talk about the past, and in a daze, it felt as if the one who had been on a business trip wasn’t her—it was me. I’m still that young upstart under her, and she’s still that gentle, kind sister.

Not long after Sister Whale left her job, I also changed jobs. I’m planning to work as a legal professional at a film and media company, and I’d like to learn more about how legal work is conducted beyond intellectual property matters. At first, I didn’t know how to review contracts, so within a week I stayed late at the office, cramming through two books on contract review and building a systematic framework. Before that, I had no experience with labor disputes, so I sought out videos, took detailed notes, and studied diligently. When drafting MCN artist contracts, I scoured others’ agreements to learn about the latest collaboration models, eventually crafting a template that is still in use today. Film‑and‑TV publicity and distribution contracts, poster‑production agreements, script contracts, director contracts, copyright‑transaction agreements—this wealth of knowledge poured into my mind, greatly expanding the scope of my legal services.

If the law only has breadth, it amounts to merely skimming the surface and ultimately fails to bring peace of mind. Although I have studied extensively, I still feel a sense of insecurity deep down. This feeling leaves me anxious every day, walking on eggshells—uncertain whether the contracts I’ve signed and the legal opinions I’ve provided are sound, whether they have reached perfection, whether they meet the requirements, whether they might create difficulties for the company, or whether the boundaries between legal and business matters should indeed be drawn in this way.

Numerous thoughts are constantly overwhelming me.

In this situation, I faced a very important decision in my life. Coincidentally, a certain court in Beijing was recruiting, and in order to address my own innerAnxiety, I resolutely took the exam and secured a position at that court.

A Visit to the Court

If you ask me whether I still want to return to working at the court, my answer would definitely be no. If you ask me whether I enjoy working at the court, I would say that I recommend all law students to work at a court after graduation.

Working at the court is demanding; each month, there are numerous cases to be heard, and we face performance targets, trial‑deadline requirements, and expectations from our superiors. Under considerable pressure, this has resulted in a thorough refinement of our case-handling capabilities.

After I started practicing law, a friend asked me what my biggest takeaway from handling cases had been. I replied that when I worked at the court, I was the one making the decisions. The arguments of both parties have been presented to me, and it is my responsibility to select the view that best applies to this case. But now, I’m going to be the one to put forward the idea, and I’ll stop at nothing to see it through.

Due to the large caseload, my understanding of intellectual property-related causes of action is also relatively profound. What the cause of action is in a particular case, what elements are required, what types of evidence can be used to prove each element, and how certain types of evidence can overcome the limitations posed by those elements—these questions are all laid out in my mind as a clear and coherent framework, which has also formed the foundation of my legal depth.

Of course, work at the court is not limited to adjudication; there is also a great deal of judicial support work, such as court transcript preparation, case file archiving, and handling appellate cases. When there’s a staffing shortage, I handle an entire case from start to finish.

One of my mentors is a trial expert in Beijing who has presided over many highly influential cases. He often tells me that, of all the assistants he’s ever worked with, I’m the best at taking court transcripts, because I can quickly summarize both sides’ arguments and turn them into a written record. I am grateful to my mentor for their guidance, as this skill actually stems from drafting judgments. Once I understood how a judgment should be written, it naturally became much easier to take court transcripts in a more precise and appropriate manner.

Nowadays, many courts have already replaced handwritten trial transcripts with video recordings, which may place even higher demands on judges.

When I was on the patent team, I had a very close friend—let’s call her Xiao Bei, since she’s a big fan of LinaBell. She is my alma mater’s alumna; we work in the same office, on the same team, and we’re also neighbors. Her family has a dog; my family has a cat. During the holidays, either I walk her dog, or she feeds my cat.

When I left Beijing, I was holding my cat, and she was holding her dog. We took a Polaroid photo, and it’s been in my wallet ever since. Later, she got married; my girlfriend was one of her bridesmaids, and her younger sister was the other. Thinking back, I even helped her sister pick out her college majors back then.

I met her mother for the second time, because when we were neighbors, we even got to eat a plate of dumplings she had made. At the wedding, they mentioned the astronomy club, because she and her husband met in an amateur astronomy group. I suddenly found myself unable to sum up all her qualities in a few words. Her work and personal life are so intertwined that we spend more time together than either of us does with our respective partners.

It really hits me—being neighbors, we’ve always helped each other out. In our team, we sometimes argue, and when we’re pulling all-nighters, we often end up ordering from Burger King. But she’s so skinny; she’s the one who’s been making me gain weight!

The people at the court are so lovely; when I left Beijing, they were the ones I missed the most. When I first joined the court, the chief judge asked me to plan and direct the annual gala. As a newcomer, I was able to pull it off successfully only with everyone’s support. I went through each program one by one, rehearsing them one after another. I knocked on every judge’s office door, trying to arrange some content for each of them, and even assigned a role to our chief judge. Back then, I was young and fearless—though it was also thanks to everyone’s tolerance; no one ever blamed me.

Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road is always jammed, the subway is packed, and there’s too much overtime—so I bought a motorcycle and became a young urban rider chasing the wind. I don’t dare to ride fast—safety comes first—but the wind has given me freedom, and it has also brought me joy. Everything at the courthouse was the most important and most beautiful period of my life.

All good things must come to an end. Although I’ve experienced many farewells, this time I’m about to leave Beijing, the city where I’ve lived for nine years. My decision to leave Beijing solidified during a late-night motorcycle ride home after a long overtime shift. That day, on the side of West Fourth Ring Road, I finished my countless bowls of shredded pork with green beans and noodles, and, rather unusually, I also ordered a serving of “tiger salad” and a bottle of Coke.

I wasn’t really that hungry, yet I ended up eating so much. As I struggled onto my motorcycle, ready to head home, I suddenly realized I was reluctant to leave—I was afraid that once I left Beijing, I’d never be able to eat noodles from this place again. I am both terrified that my life is about to change and, deep down, eagerly anticipating the countless possibilities that lie ahead. The moment I faced my own choice, everything in my eyes changed.

I walked past the Wanda Plaza I’ve been to countless times, but this Wanda near my home felt so unfamiliar to me. Under the hazy lights, the square was eerily quiet, with only a few scattered people. I turned left at the square; the wind felt different, the streetlights looked different, and the scenery had changed too. I suddenly felt a pang of anxiety, because until that moment, I had never imagined leaving Beijing; I had always assumed I would live there for the rest of my life.

Moved from Daxing to Haidian, then from Haidian to Chaoyang, and finally from Chaoyang to Fengtai. In Beijing, I left behind so much, and Beijing, in turn, has left so much of itself within me. A part of my soul has already clung to the willow catkins of Beijing, scattered in its smog, seeped into its snow, and fallen upon its soil.

Beijing, Beijing.

Shanghai, Shanghai.

I flew to Shanghai with my cat. I jokingly say she’s different from other cats—she’s a cat who’s been up in the sky, too. At the beginning of 2022, I arrived in Shanghai, but not long after, well-known circumstances made it difficult for me to get around. On a night in my rented room in Jiading, I heard the sound of a Y-20 landing at Hongqiao Airport. At that moment, I suddenly felt a strange sense of belonging, as if I were sharing the city’s hardships.

After Operation Restore Freedom concluded, I went to a law firm and began my career as a lawyer. At that time, I was still in my internship, so I was doing paid work. After my salaried position ended, I resolutely joined Zhiheng and became an independent lawyer.

Although I’ve glossed over it here, there are so many mixed emotions swirling within me. After thinking it over for a long time, I could only come up with one dish as a metaphor—deliciously tossed bitter melon. (To prepare, wash the bitter melon, slice it open, remove the seeds and pith, blanch it briefly, then rinse under cold water to keep it crisp.) Add white sugar and white vinegar, mix well, then sprinkle with minced garlic, chopped green onions, and Sichuan peppercorns. Pour freshly pressed chili oil over the top to bring out the aroma, then add salt and mix thoroughly.

) When you bite into it, you taste sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, and salty—just like the five flavors of life. It’s best enjoyed as a summer drink accompaniment.

I don’t usually like bitter melon, but this particular dish is my favorite. I’m not being overly sentimental when I say this dish has some connection to life—simply because the flavors complement each other, and even the bitterness doesn’t feel so unpleasant. When I had just become independent, I had no cases and was idle at home. Although I spent some time honing my culinary skills, for some reason, after moving to Shanghai, I never ate this dish again.

Actually, based on my professional experience, choosing to become a solo lawyer in Shanghai can be considered taking on the “hard mode.” I have neither resources nor friends; I came to Shanghai and relied entirely on myself.Perhaps I’m a decent person, good at making friends, and my practice has been honed over many years—so being able to sustain myself in my very first year as a full‑fledged lawyer is already more than enough.

I’m fortunate that I chose to join Zhiheng Shanghai right when it was first established. We’re all committed to making Zhiheng even better, treating the brand as an integral part of ourselves—breathing with intellectual property and sharing Zhiheng’s destiny. Later, I went to headquarters for an event and met many wonderful people from all over the country. By treating others with sincerity, I also gained a lot of like-minded friends.

I am grateful to Zhiheng Headquarters for their recognition and for appointing me Deputy Director of the Zhiheng National Intellectual Property Center. This is not merely an honor; it also carries a significant responsibility.

My journey at Zhiheng has really only just begun, and that’s precisely the part I find hardest to sum up, because everything is still unfolding—much like riding a motorcycle. Perhaps my studies were in first gear, Beijing was second, and after arriving at Zhiheng in Shanghai, I’ve only just shifted into third. The noticeable torque at low RPM really gives me a solid sense of power, even though the speed isn’t high yet. I know I’ll shift smoothly into fourth and fifth gear, and I’ll keep driving.

I can’t list all the important people from my trip to Shanghai, because right now, everyone matters to me—there are the seniors who have supported me, the older brothers who have helped me, the sisters who have cared for me, and, most of all, my fellow travelers.。

What is it that I want to do? I found myself asking as I wrote this. I’ve been rambling on and on like this—my past self has shaped who I am today, and my present self will determine who I become in the future. I want to be a good son, a good husband, a good colleague, a good friend, and a good lawyer. I want to live my life well, and I want to walk this journey with grace. I hope my wishes will come true.。

This is a journey, a vast journey called fate.。

-- Pu Shu, "Journey"

END

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Introduction