Lin Yanche—Lu Xun

Lin Yanche—Lu Xun is one of the book’s most recognizable alliances: a friendship conducted through insults, shared drinking, strategic warnings, and reluctant but immediate concern. Lin Yanche is not a passive companion to Lu Xun. He challenges Lu Xun’s self-justifications, reminds him of obligations he would rather avoid, and reacts sharply when Lu Xun’s conduct threatens another person’s welfare. Lu Xun, for his part, treats Lin Yanche as someone who can be summoned, contradicted, and trusted with matters too serious for casual acquaintances. Their intimacy is therefore expressed less through tenderness than through the freedom to speak without ceremony and the certainty that the other will still appear when needed.

A Friendship Built on Blunt Familiarity

Lin Yanche’s arrival at the drinking gathering immediately establishes the tone of the relationship. Lu Xun has gone to Blue Sky and invited Lin Yanche and Hua Shuo, but when Lin Yanche enters with a darkened face and sees a bottle already waiting before Lu Xun, he objects that Lu Xun is asking him to accompany him even while courting disaster in broad daylight. He invokes the company’s unfinished work as his reason for refusing, yet the complaint is performative: when Lu Xun tells him that he may choose not to come and accuses him of turning hostile and recognizing no one, Lin Yanche can only grumble and attend. His resistance is real enough to preserve his independence, but not strong enough to break the bond.

The scene makes their alliance legible through contradiction. Lu Xun does not politely request Lin Yanche’s company, and Lin Yanche does not answer with deference. Each man assumes the right to criticize the other, while both understand that the invitation carries an expectation of loyalty. The company’s business is an ordinary practical pressure, but friendship overrides it without requiring sentimental explanation. Their companionship is presented as a durable habit of mutual summons: Lu Xun calls, Lin Yanche complains, and Lin Yanche comes.

Wine, Self-Justification, and Strategic Counsel

At the gathering, Lu Xun presents himself as depressed after having behaved unscrupulously the previous day. The faint smile accompanying his confession prevents it from becoming a straightforward apology, and Lin Yanche immediately translates the claim into a more embarrassing truth: Lu Xun is upset because his woman did not give him face. His response strips away Lu Xun’s theatrical self-pity and identifies the emotional injury beneath it. The alliance functions as an antidote to self-deception because Lin Yanche refuses to accept Lu Xun’s preferred description of his own conduct.

Hua Shuo then proposes that the women accompany them to an academic conference in Beijing that weekend, and Lu Xun agrees. The suggestion turns the drinking scene toward a possible shared outing, but it also shows how the men’s private relationships and public obligations are intertwined. Lin Yanche’s position within the conversation is not merely social. He is part of the circle in which Lu Xun’s romantic decisions are tested, discussed, and redirected. The gathering becomes a small strategic council disguised as leisure.

Counsel in the Face of Family and Identity

The alliance becomes more consequential when Lin Yanche reminds Lu Xun to consider what sincere meeting gift should be given to Elder Su. The advice is concrete and relational: Lu Xun must not approach the Su family casually, because the gift will express the seriousness of his intentions. Lin Yanche therefore acts as a mediator between Lu Xun’s impulsive temperament and the ceremonial demands surrounding Su Xiangwan’s family.

Lu Xun’s response reveals that the matter is tied to a deeper threat. He states that if Su Qingrou is the person under suspicion, he will not let her off. Lin Yanche’s hand trembles as he asks what Lu Xun has discovered, a physical reaction that marks the change in stakes. The conversation has moved from social etiquette to hidden identity, childhood trauma, and possible culpability. Lu Xun recalls that the woman in question had been kidnapped as a child, turning the past into evidence that may determine present loyalties. Lin Yanche’s role is important precisely because he does not supply a solution; he registers the danger, demands clarification, and forces Lu Xun’s accusation into the open.

Their shared understanding is consequently built on incomplete knowledge and mutual pressure. Lu Xun brings suspicion and anger; Lin Yanche supplies the question that exposes how much remains unknown. The friendship does not eliminate conflict. Instead, it creates a space where dangerous conclusions can be confronted before they become irreversible action.

Concern Beneath the Insults

The clearest proof of the alliance appears after Su Xiangwan has fainted. Lu Xun informs Lin Yanche by telephone that he has found her, taken her home, and notified Hua Shuo. Lin Yanche immediately objects that Lu Xun should send her to the Hospital now that she has lost consciousness. Lu Xun answers that she dislikes the Hospital and that he fears she will be unhappy when she wakes. The exchange exposes Lu Xun’s possessive, improvised form of care: he wants to protect her according to his own judgment, even when that judgment conflicts with medical caution.

Lin Yanche responds with furious moral clarity. He reminds Lu Xun that, while arguing with her, Lu Xun had not shown the same concern about whether she would be unhappy. The rebuke links the immediate medical risk to the earlier emotional violence. Lin Yanche is not simply worried about Su Xiangwan’s condition; he is condemning the contradiction between Lu Xun’s claim to care and the conduct that helped produce the crisis. His final insult, calling Lu Xun a single-celled organism, is harsh but also intimate: anger becomes the language through which he insists that Lu Xun accept responsibility.

The telephone scene changes the value at stake in the relationship from conviviality to accountability. Lu Xun’s need for an ally is no longer measured by whether Lin Yanche will drink with him, but by whether Lin Yanche will oppose him when his protective instincts become dangerous. Lin Yanche does oppose him, and the fact that he does so confirms the alliance rather than negating it. His loyalty is not obedience; it is intervention.

Narrative Function and Significance

Lin Yanche—Lu Xun gives the novel a compact dramatic structure in which friendship and conflict operate simultaneously. Lin Yanche is a sharp-tongued corrective to Lu Xun’s pride, while Lu Xun is the powerful friend whose actions repeatedly create situations requiring correction. Their scenes move from invitation to argument, from family strategy to suspected identity, and from romantic grievance to a question of physical safety. Each turn expands the meaning of their bond.

The relationship also distinguishes alliance from approval. Lin Yanche attends when Lu Xun calls, advises him about Elder Su, asks what he has learned about the childhood kidnapping, and demands that he seek proper care for Su Xiangwan. Yet he mocks Lu Xun’s vanity, rejects his excuses, and condemns the gap between his arguments and his professed concern. The friendship is sustained by precisely this refusal to flatter. In a world where love, family loyalty, and power are repeatedly entangled, Lin Yanche serves as the ally who remains close enough to act and independent enough to say that Lu Xun is wrong.