Lin Yen-che

Lin Yen-che is Lu Xun’s longtime friend and business rival, a figure whose forceful presence is increasingly undercut by illness and injury. His late-story arc brings him from a manic hospital crisis into a confrontation with Chu Fei, then to the revelation that he has liver cancer; alongside that physical decline, he voices a lingering attachment to Su Qingrou that is notably calmer than the possessive conflicts surrounding them.

Identity and Introduction

The available scenes establish Lin Yen-che chiefly through his connections and crises rather than through an account of his early life. He is close enough to Lu Xun for Lu to act quickly on his behalf, yet their bond includes rivalry and challenges over power. Lin also occupies a fraught place in Su Qingrou’s life: the story presents a history of indebtedness between them, but does not reduce his feelings to a simple claim of possession.

His first prominent appearance in this stretch of the story comes through news that he has been hospitalized. Lu Xun tells Su Xiangwan that Lin is in the hospital and says he will wait there so they can take Grandfather home together. The announcement surprises her; she thinks of Lin as almost indestructible and wants to go show off her own abilities in front of him. That image of an iron-bodied man is immediately complicated by the account of Lin’s condition: his mania is so severe that objects crashing inside his ward can be heard from outside its door.

Hospitalization, Injury, and Confrontation

Lin’s hospital scenes make vulnerability audible as well as visible. The noise from his ward marks the intensity of his manic state, while the practical details of treatment place him under care: Lu Xun reminds him to rest and have his wounds changed. The narrative does not explain the cause of those wounds in these scenes, but their presence adds physical injury to the instability already associated with his hospitalization.

Even while injured, Lin remains sharply engaged with events beyond his sickbed. When Lu Xun is with him, Lin probes whether Lu truly needs no help. Lu responds that no one should assume they are the only person with power in the city, then asks whether Jin Zhengnan might also be there. After Lin confirms the implication, Lu says he will arrange for Lin to leave the hospital and fly out that night, then strides from the room. The exchange presents Lin as both a patient dependent on others’ assistance and a participant in consequential decisions.

That tension becomes more exposed in the encounter with Chu Fei. Lin snaps that even a half-crippled man can still cause trouble, a bitter acknowledgment of his reduced condition coupled with defiance. Lu tries to send him back to rest and reminds him that his wounds need changing. Chu Fei, by contrast, mocks the danger Lin faces and argues that someone unable to preserve his own life cannot fight him. Lin is thus drawn into a contest in which his physical weakness is made an instrument of humiliation, but it does not silence his resistance.

Lu Xun and the People Around Him

Lin’s relationship with Lu Xun is defined by familiarity that survives sharp-edged exchanges. Lu watches over his rest and medical care, and later arranges a possible departure from the hospital when the situation demands it. Yet Lin is not merely a passive recipient of protection: he questions Lu’s confidence, tests whether he needs assistance, and remains involved in the decisions that bring them into conflict with Chu Fei. Their scenes hold friendship and competition together rather than resolving one into the other.

Lin also shows an attentive, if blunt, understanding of Lu Xun’s marriage. When Song Yun’er reaches for Lu, Lin tells him that he believes Lu did not make a move on her; otherwise, he says, Su Xiangwan would not have avoided him but would have handed him divorce papers. He then details Su’s physical fragility: her periods leave her severely debilitated, and a bout of flu can bring on a fever lasting three days and nights. His warning that Lu should prepare to identify her body is deliberately alarming. Lu’s face turns deathly pale and he feels pain in his chest. The exchange shows Lin using intimate knowledge of Su’s vulnerabilities to force Lu to confront the possible consequences of their estrangement.

Illness and the Late-Story Return

Lin’s decline becomes unmistakable when he arrives at the villa in a black truck with Chu Fei and Lu Xun. Su Xiangwan sees that he is unshaven, unkempt, and extremely thin. Yun then tells her that Lin has liver cancer and is waiting for a suitable replacement liver; without one, she says, he can only wait for death. The diagnosis recasts his earlier hospitalizations and visible deterioration. What had seemed like temporary incapacity is revealed as a potentially fatal condition, although the supplied scenes do not establish whether a donor is found or what happens medically afterward.

The late exchange about Su Qingrou gives this threatened future its emotional counterpart. After Song Yun’er leaves the ward, Su Xiangwan asks Lin what he still wants from her sister. Lin answers by describing what each owes the other as too tangled to sort out. Rather than insisting on settling that account, he says he wants only to be able to see Su Qingrou for the rest of his life. His gaze is described as calm and without malice, a striking contrast to the manic turmoil associated with his earlier hospitalization and the threatening contests around Chu Fei.

That conversation does not produce a declared reconciliation. Lu Xun gently asks Su Xiangwan not to blame him for taking Lin’s side and to let Lin and Su Qingrou’s relationship develop as it will. A few days later, Lin comes to the hospital to see Lu, and Su Qingrou comes with him. Their joint arrival confirms that she is once again present beside him, but the scene offers no definitive account of their future. Lin’s story therefore closes this stretch on proximity and possibility, not on a completed repair.

Change and Narrative Significance

Lin Yen-che is presented through a sustained contrast: the man others treat as powerful and difficult to contain becomes a hospitalized patient, a wounded participant in a dangerous confrontation, and a visibly emaciated cancer patient. The story does not make illness erase his agency. He continues to question Lu, provoke his opponents, and articulate what he wants from Su Qingrou. At the same time, his diagnosis gives urgency to his wish to remain near her, without proving that illness itself has resolved their history.

His late characterization also shifts the register of his attachment. The relationship is framed as a knot of mutual debts rather than a clean ledger that one person can close. His request is not presented as a demand that Su Qingrou repay him or return to him; it is a desire to keep seeing her. In a narrative crowded with rivalry, force, and attempts to control other people’s choices, this quiet formulation does not settle the conflict, but it marks a meaningful change in how Lin speaks about it.