Lu Family

The Lu Family is not merely a domestic background but a governing structure built from senior authority, family reputation, marriage alliances, and personal intervention. Through Lu Xun, Shen Hui, Lu Cheng, and Shen Yiyun, the household regulates intimacy as forcefully as it regulates conduct: a residence can become a place of protection, interrogation, judgment, and negotiation. Its decisive significance lies in the way private family power repeatedly competes with romantic choice and individual autonomy.

Household Structure and Authority

The family’s internal hierarchy is most visible at the Lu residence, where Lu Xun brings Su Xiangwan home and encounters Shen Hui’s anger. Shen Hui demands an explanation for his failure to answer Shen Yiyun’s call and treats his conduct toward his cousin as a matter requiring elder supervision. Her authority is not casual irritation; she expects Lu Xun, as the older male relative, to protect and discipline Shen Yiyun, while Lu Xun resists being assigned responsibility on those terms.

Lu Cheng provides a second form of authority within the household. After the confrontation, he descends from the second floor to comfort Shen Hui and interprets the conflict as evidence that Su Xiangwan will not quietly endure pressure. He regards her refusal to compromise as a meaningful contrast with Shen Hui’s harsher methods, even while acknowledging that Shen Hui believed those methods had once prevented a serious disaster. The conversation reveals a family capable of self-criticism, but only after its authority has already been tested in practice.

The Lu Family also manages relationships through arrangements that blur affection and administration. When Shen Yiyun recovers, Shen Hui agrees to let her live with Zuo Teng, noting that the couple already wishes to live together. A romantic relationship thus becomes a household matter, handled through elder approval and practical placement rather than left entirely to the individuals involved.

Kinship, Marriage, and Boundary Disputes

The family’s most persistent tension concerns the unstable meaning of kinship. Shen Yiyun is described as a child adopted by Lu Xun’s uncle and therefore his cousin, but Lu Xun emphasizes that she is not related to him by blood. His defense depends on separating a familial name from biological relation: he argues that a non-blood relative remains a man or woman despite the title of cousin. This distinction allows him to reject the idea that kinship automatically determines emotional or romantic boundaries.

The same problem shapes Lu Xun’s relationship with Su Xiangwan. When Su Xiangwan pulls off his shirt and calls him her husband, the marital title functions as a public and intimate claim at once. Lu Xun’s uncertainty about whether she recognizes him underscores the instability surrounding marriage in the narrative: the word husband can signify genuine attachment, social legitimacy, possessive reassurance, or a role that an outsider might occupy merely by being called one.

The household therefore becomes a site where names are treated as social instruments. Cousin, brother, wife, and daughter-in-law carry expectations, but those expectations can be challenged when they conceal desire, control access, or demand obedience. Lu Xun’s insistence that Shen Yiyun’s lack of blood relation matters directly contests Shen Hui’s attempt to govern the situation through family status.

Family Power Beyond the Residence

The Lu Family’s influence extends beyond domestic scenes into commercial and protective networks. In negotiations with Lin Yanche, Lu Xun uses the East District land as leverage, making his interference in affairs involving Su Qingrou the condition for the transaction. The land is not treated as a neutral corporate asset; it becomes an instrument through which Lu Xun protects someone connected to his household and forces a rival to sever ties.

The family’s authority also operates through delegated personnel. Manager Wu is instructed to escort Song Yun’er wherever she wishes to go, showing that Lu Xun can convert a personal decision into an organized household action. In another crisis, police surveillance records a young woman bringing Mrs. Lu back to her apartment, and the authorities prepare to return her to her family after contacting them. Formal law appears in the scene, but it intersects with Lu Xun’s private standing and the protective network around his wife.

The same pattern appears when Lu Xun and Lin Yanche travel to Yan City. Chu Fei’s men are waiting at the airport, but Lu Xun has brought many people with him, indicating that the conflict is conducted through organized personal forces as much as through official institutions. The Lu Family’s power is consequently both familial and quasi-political: it rests on names, money, staff, allies, and the ability to act quickly when a member is threatened.

Conflict, Protection, and Consequences

The family’s protective ideal is repeatedly placed under strain by the treatment of women. Su Xiangwan’s heart aches when she sees Su Qingrou crying silently with kiss marks on her body, while an image shows Lin Yanche passionately embracing Song Yun’er at the same time. The scene links bodily harm, romantic betrayal, and family responsibility; women’s suffering becomes evidence of conflicts that men have attempted to control through secrecy and force.

Lu Xun’s intervention for Su Qingrou likewise converts emotional loyalty into a strategic bargain. He makes Lin Yanche’s non-interference in his affairs with Su Qingrou the condition for pursuing the East District land. Su Xiangwan realizes that Lu Xun is willing to fight Lin Yanche on her behalf, and that the transaction is designed to force a separation rather than merely secure property. Family-adjacent protection thus carries a cost: personal bonds are defended through economic pressure and rival negotiations.

The household’s internal consequences are equally sharp. Song Yun’er, abandoned and humiliated, confronts Lu Xun over the transformation of their relationship and believes he has been waiting to degrade her. Later, when Lu Xun sends her away without asking her to stay, she reads Su Xiangwan’s slight smile as proof that the latter must feel satisfied. Her anger has nowhere to go, demonstrating how the Lu Family’s decisions redistribute resentment even when they are framed as orderly or protective.

Narrative Significance

The Lu Family gives the story a stable institutional center while exposing the instability beneath its titles. Its residence contains arguments about marriage, adopted kinship, female protection, and elder control; its business dealings turn land into emotional leverage; and its staff and allies extend household decisions into public and criminal emergencies. The family is strongest when it acts collectively, yet those collective actions repeatedly create new conflicts by treating intimate life as something that can be administered.

Its most revealing contrast is between Shen Hui’s model of protection and Su Xiangwan’s refusal to submit quietly. Lu Cheng recognizes that Su Xiangwan will not simply swallow her anger, and Shen Hui eventually concedes that Shen Yiyun may live with Zuo Teng. These concessions do not dissolve the family hierarchy, but they show it adapting under pressure. The Lu Family’s continuing narrative function is therefore double: it preserves status and protection, while also serving as the arena in which inherited rules about kinship and marriage are challenged, revised, and sometimes exposed as inadequate.