Hot Springs Village is more than a resort in the story: it is a privately controlled retreat where Lu Xun turns a casual outing into an enclosed romantic world, then converts that gesture of intimacy into a business opportunity connected to Su Xiangwan’s future. Its significance lies in the way the location joins affection, exclusivity, corporate wealth, and the unfinished ambitions of the Su family.

Setting and Arrival

Thus, Su Xiangwan obediently stood up, ate a meal with Lu Xun, and went with him to Hot Springs Village. The visit follows a small misunderstanding about the season: she had imagined snowflakes, while Lu Xun patiently reminded her that it was autumn. Even this ordinary exchange frames the village as a place reached through his arrangements and her decision to accompany him, rather than as an independently chosen public excursion.

When they arrived, the village appeared strangely empty. No customers could be seen inside the large resort, creating the impression that the business might already have closed. The absence of other visitors is not accidental. Lu Xun explained that the village had indeed been closed because he had arranged to reserve the entire place, fearing that other people might disturb them. Hot Springs Village therefore functions simultaneously as a leisure venue and a controlled private enclosure: its openness as a public attraction is temporarily withdrawn so that the couple can occupy it alone.

Private Retreat and Romantic Possession

The village’s central scene is built around Lu Xun’s extravagant response to Su Xiangwan’s presence. After revealing that the resort had been reserved for them, he kissed her before she could finish reacting, turning the empty public space into the setting for an intensely private encounter. The location’s quiet is thus not merely scenic background; it is produced through Lu Xun’s money and authority and immediately filled with his physical insistence.

This arrangement reflects the broader pattern of his romantic behavior. Lu Xun’s affection is described through abundance and possession: he likes keeping a woman in his arms, carrying her so that she cannot walk away, kissing her, and trying to satisfy even impossible wishes. At Hot Springs Village, that pattern becomes spatial. Instead of merely offering attention, he removes every possible interruption. The resort is made to accommodate a relationship in which devotion and control are difficult to separate.

The same possessive indulgence appears in the couple’s earlier plans. On the afternoon when they had agreed to visit a wedding shop, they spent the entire afternoon in bed instead, while Lu Xun was domineering enough to resist letting Su Xiangwan put on her clothes. His preference for controlling the setting of intimacy extends from the private room to the whole resort. Hot Springs Village enlarges the logic of the bedroom until an entire commercial property becomes an extension of the couple’s secluded domestic space.

From Romantic Gesture to Corporate Project

The village does not remain only a one-night indulgence. When Su Xiangwan objects that repeatedly closing venues affects other people, Lu Xun offers a new arrangement: on her next visit, she can go directly to a hot spring operated under Imperial Group without taking over the entire field. He then surprises her by proposing to buy a hot spring for her. The gesture initially sounds like an absurdly lavish personal gift, reinforcing his reputation for being wealthy and willful.

Lu Xun subsequently gives the plan a commercial rationale. He has noticed that tourism around Beijing is promising and intends to open a branch specializing in that sector; the hot spring village would be an accessory to the larger enterprise. This explanation changes the meaning of the setting. What first appears to be a private playground becomes an entry point into Imperial Group’s expansion, showing how Lu Xun’s resources can transform personal desire into corporate infrastructure.

The project also offers Su Xiangwan a more personal significance. She remembers that, before Lin Yanche acted against the Su family, her grandfather had wanted to develop a tourism industry. Su Qingrou had told her that this was work her grandfather had specifically prepared for Su Xiangwan to undertake after graduation. Lu Xun’s proposal therefore touches an abandoned family ambition. His commercial plan gives her relief because it may restore a path connected to the future her grandfather had imagined for her, rather than merely surrounding her with luxury.

Access, Control, and Narrative Function

Hot Springs Village is defined by the contrast between public accessibility and private exclusion. It is large enough to serve many customers, yet Lu Xun can empty it for one evening; it belongs to the sphere of tourism, yet its first narrative function is to shelter a couple from everyone else. The resort materializes the unequal power behind their romance: Lu Xun can purchase privacy, redirect public space, and promise an entire business venture as an answer to a personal complaint.

That spatial control also distinguishes the village from other charged locations in the story. Lin Yanche’s manor is associated with coercive threats, as he warns Su Qingrou that leaving even half a step will endanger Jin Zhengnan’s ability to leave the hospital. Hot Springs Village is not presented through that same explicit threat, but its sealed-off emptiness belongs to the same wider pattern in which relationships are expressed through control over movement and access. The difference is that Lu Xun’s enclosure is staged as care and luxury, while Lin Yanche’s is openly punitive.

The location’s narrative placement emphasizes this doubleness. It begins as an intimate escape, develops into a display of Lu Xun’s wealth, and ends as a possible bridge between Su Xiangwan’s personal future and the Su family’s lost economic project. Hot Springs Village thus condenses the novel’s recurring tension between love and freedom: the more completely Lu Xun can arrange the world around Su Xiangwan, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish protection from possession. At the same time, the village gives her access to a future that might otherwise have been taken from her, making the controlled retreat both a symbol of constraint and a site of renewed possibility.