Europe is the principal destination associated with Su Xiangwan and Lu Xun’s planned honeymoon, but its narrative significance extends beyond travel. It is imagined as a carefully arranged reward within their five-hundred-million-yuan contract marriage, then becomes the setting for illness, surveillance, jealousy, and confrontation. The distance from home briefly creates the appearance of privacy; instead, Europe carries the couple’s unresolved conflicts into a new landscape and makes the gap between romantic promise and coercive control more visible.

A Promised Honeymoon and Marital Bargaining

Lu Xun first presents Europe as part of a larger promise to Su Xiangwan. After their relationship reaches the apparent edge of separation, he insists that he is serious, kisses her, and says that he has already planned a honeymoon in Europe. He also offers to arrange his work in advance and hold a wedding whenever she wants, framing the trip as evidence that the marriage can become more than a transaction. Yet Su Xiangwan remains conscious that she is the wife Lu Xun bought for 500 million yuan, so the promise does not erase the original imbalance between them. Europe therefore enters the story simultaneously as a romantic future and as an item in a negotiated exchange.

Lu Xun later announces the trip publicly when Luo Jingjing attempts to invite him to a meal. He replies that he and his wife are going to Europe for their honeymoon the following week and redirects any official business to his agent and assistant. His wording turns the journey into a declaration of marital status. It closes off Luo Jingjing’s personal invitation while making Su Xiangwan’s position as his wife unmistakable to an outside observer. The honeymoon is thus both private itinerary and public boundary-setting.

Europe as an Unstable Refuge

The journey is also connected with Lu Xun’s effort to remove Su Xiangwan from immediate emotional pressures. When he is angry about the crisis involving Lin Yanche and Su Qingrou, Su Xiangwan asks him to trust her and take her to see Lin Yanche, believing that the matter concerns her sister. The proposed European escape cannot permanently isolate the marriage from the family conflicts that govern it. Even before departure, the couple’s private meal and intended retreat are interrupted by anger, loyalty, and the demand to confront another man’s actions.

A parallel account presents Europe as the destination chosen when Song Yuner is told that Lu Xun is tired and wants to relax there with her. The contrast matters because the same place can be offered as rest, companionship, or romantic proof depending on who is being addressed. Europe consequently becomes a contested emotional geography rather than a simple honeymoon setting. Its meaning shifts with the relationship attached to it, and the possibility of travel itself becomes evidence in disputes over intimacy and fidelity.

Italy, Illness, and Bodily Vulnerability

The European trip quickly loses its idealized quality when Su Xiangwan catches a cold on the second day after leaving for Italy. The illness is not an incidental inconvenience in the surrounding plot: it brings the promised journey down from the level of grand marital planning to the vulnerable reality of a body that is weak, feverish, and dependent. Later, after a night in which she is insufficiently covered, she develops a fever and asks Manager Wu to buy antipyretic medicine. The recurring weakness associated with her body makes Europe part of a pattern in which romantic protection is repeatedly tested by physical vulnerability.

Lu Xun’s response in Italy combines care with his established tendency to control the conditions around Su Xiangwan. He stops tormenting her, strokes her hair, and reassures her that a small matter has occurred. He explains that Lin Yanche has come to Italy with Yun’er because Lin Yanche may have sensed or guessed something, while Su Xiangwan is already concerned that Lin Yanche knows about her birthday. Lu Xun tells her not to worry about anything else and treats her pleasure as sufficient justification for the elaborate arrangements. The tenderness is genuine within the scene, but it is surrounded by concealment and management: Europe is meant to protect her from trouble even as trouble has followed them there.

Intrusion, Suspicion, and the Collapse of Distance

The arrival of Lin Yanche and Song Yuner demonstrates that Europe cannot function as a sealed space for Lu Xun and Su Xiangwan. Their presence suggests that the couple’s movements are being interpreted, tracked, or anticipated by others. The honeymoon’s physical distance from Cloud City offers no corresponding emotional distance from the network of obligations and rivalries surrounding the marriage. Europe therefore intensifies the story’s recurring tension between the private couple and the public consequences of their relationships.

That tension is reinforced by Lu Xun’s later explanations concerning Shen Yiyun. He identifies her as the child adopted by his uncle and therefore his cousin, explaining that she came to Cloud City to perform and that he arranged for her to stay near the theater. Su Xiangwan treats the omission as another instance of the problem associated with Song Yuner: information that should have been disclosed is instead left for her to discover. Although this explanation is not itself a European scene, it clarifies the kind of suspicion carried into Europe. The journey is supposed to secure intimacy, yet the marriage remains vulnerable to undisclosed connections and ambiguous kinship labels.

Narrative Significance

Europe crystallizes the novel’s romance structure by placing the promise of a honeymoon beside the realities of a secret, financially grounded marriage. Lu Xun uses the destination to offer a wedding, relaxation, and a shared future; Su Xiangwan experiences the offer through the memory of being purchased, through illness, and through the continuing need to test whether his declarations can be trusted. The place is consequently marked by both approach and resistance: it permits gestures of tenderness while exposing the coercive conditions from which those gestures cannot be detached.

Its broader significance lies in the failure of geography to solve relational conflict. Italy does not free the couple from family danger, rival attachments, or the consequences of Lu Xun’s possessiveness. Instead, Europe makes those pressures legible through contrast. The language of honeymoon and relaxation promises an orderly romantic narrative, while fever, unwanted arrivals, and concealed information repeatedly interrupt it. As a result, Europe remains an unfinished refuge: a location where Lu Xun and Su Xiangwan can perform closeness, but where the marriage’s deeper questions about ownership, trust, and freedom continue to travel with them.