Lu Xun’s asthma and respiratory disease

Lu Xun’s asthma and respiratory disease is not merely a medical detail attached to an otherwise powerful man. It repeatedly interrupts his public authority and private control, exposing the physical limits beneath his commanding role. Reports of serious breathing trouble, sudden attacks, emergency medication, hospitalization, and the fear of death make illness a recurrent pressure on his relationships with Su Xiangwan, Hua Shuo, and others. The condition also becomes a narrative instrument through which concern is voiced, information is withheld, and affection is tested against resentment.

Symptoms and Medical Uncertainty

The condition first enters the surrounding characters’ awareness through incomplete and uneasy information. Su Qingwen hears late at night that Lu Xun has a breathing problem and suspects that it is more serious than asthma. The report is framed as concern rather than a confirmed diagnosis, establishing a pattern in which Lu Xun’s body is discussed by others before he explains it himself. Su Xiangwan has heard her mother-in-law mention his shortness of breath, yet she initially refuses to let the information draw her emotionally closer to him. Her indifference is significant because it places the illness against her resistance to falling in love: knowing that Lu Xun is vulnerable does not automatically dissolve the distance between them.

The disease is presented most concretely during a recurrence. Lu Xun suddenly finds his illness returning, quickly takes a pill from his pocket, removes his mask, and sprays the medicine into his mouth. After several deep breaths, he feels better, but the improvement is temporary and visibly costly. Sweat covers him, his body appears close to collapse, and he slowly slides to the floor beside the bed. The sequence makes the attack a physical event rather than a vague sign of fragility: breathing becomes an action he must actively recover, while the medication carried on his person functions as a small emergency apparatus for maintaining control.

Illness and Care

Lu Xun’s attack prompts him to call Hua Shuo, but the response is not gentle reassurance. Hua Shuo angrily reproaches him for leaving the ward and running around when he should remain under medical supervision. The rebuke reveals a practical care structure around Lu Xun: his associates understand that his willpower and status do not make him safe, and they attempt to impose limits that he himself resists. The exchange also gives the illness a social dimension. Lu Xun’s danger is intensified not only by the symptoms but by his repeated decision to act as though ordinary obligations can override medical necessity.

His respiratory condition becomes especially entangled with Su Xiangwan’s vulnerability. Jin Zhengnan recalls that Lu Xun visited her during the night, then became ill and was sent to his private ward. Lu Xun’s hospitalization therefore follows an act of concern for Su Xiangwan rather than a detached medical episode. The fact that he is described as worried about her while being transferred to a private ward reverses the expected arrangement: the powerful husband who comes to protect her becomes the patient who must be protected. Su Xiangwan responds with a forced smile and emotional turmoil, suggesting that his illness reaches her even when she tries to keep her feelings under control.

The Body in Conflict and Marriage

Lu Xun’s breathing disease does not keep him outside danger. During the conflict surrounding Song Yuner, his wrist is injured while he protects her, and the injury is linked to the wider emotional complication that Lin Yanche has spent the night protecting Su Qingrou instead of responding to Song Yuner’s attempts to comfort him. The account places Lu Xun’s bodily vulnerability within a network of competing loyalties. His respiratory illness is not the only threat to his body, but it supplies a background against which every injury and exertion carries heightened consequence.

The same pattern appears when Lu Xun goes to meet Su Xiangwan during a dangerous confrontation. He ignores wounds on his face, crouches to hold her, and reassures her when she is cold and frightened. Blood is still trickling from the corner of his mouth when she notices that he is injured. His immediate priority is her safety, even though his own body is already compromised. The scene makes care reciprocal but unequal: Su Xiangwan is the person he rushes to protect, while the signs of his illness and injury reveal the price of that protection. His kiss after taking her face in his hands is framed by the conviction that her being safe matters more than anything else, turning bodily suffering into evidence of attachment without erasing its physical reality.

Information, Fear, and Consequence

The narrative repeatedly distributes Lu Xun’s medical information through other people. Su Qingwen reports the seriousness of his breathing problem; Jin Zhengnan recounts his hospitalization; Hua Shuo responds to the attack after receiving Lu Xun’s call; and Lin Yanche weaponizes knowledge of Su Xiangwan’s weakness by warning Lu Xun that she may be dangerously ill. This circulation of medical knowledge creates an unstable boundary between care and control. Illness is never only private when it affects a marriage already marked by suspicion, separation, and emotional resistance.

Lin Yanche’s warning produces an especially sharp physiological reaction. He tells Lu Xun that Su Xiangwan is so weak that menstruation can leave her seeming near death, that influenza strikes her severely, and that a cold can bring a fever lasting three days and three nights. He then advises Lu Xun to prepare to identify her body. Lu Xun’s heart suddenly develops a dull pain, and his face turns deathly pale. The scene mirrors his own condition through another person’s threatened body: information about Su Xiangwan’s possible death makes Lu Xun’s physical vulnerability visible again, showing that fear can trigger an immediate bodily collapse even when no new respiratory attack is explicitly described.

Disease as a Wider Bodily Regime

Lu Xun’s illness exists within a broader narrative field of medical vulnerability. Su Qingrou is hospitalized for acute appendicitis and undergoes surgery to remove her appendix, while Su Xiangwan has suffered a high fever and needs recovery and supervision. Lin Yanche is later revealed to have liver cancer and to be waiting for a suitable liver donor, with death presented as the alternative. Against this range of conditions, Lu Xun’s asthma and respiratory disease is distinctive not because it is the only serious illness, but because it repeatedly collides with his insistence on movement, protection, and authority.

The contrast between Lu Xun’s apparent invulnerability and his dependence on pills, wards, and emergency care gives the condition its lasting significance. He can leave a hospital, take responsibility for a crisis, protect another person while injured, and command the direction of a relationship, yet a recurrence of breathing trouble can force him to the floor. The illness therefore unsettles the image of mastery that surrounds him. It also makes intimacy material: concern arrives through hospital messages, hurried visits, angry reprimands, frightened reactions, and the recognition of blood, sweat, pallor, and breath. Lu Xun’s respiratory disease is consequently both a lived bodily limitation and a recurring measure of how much his relationships can withstand when power gives way to vulnerability.