Su Qingrou's state of losing a child

Su Qingrou’s loss of her child is not treated as an isolated medical occurrence but as a lasting relational state that reorganizes nearly every confrontation between her and Lin Yanche. She ends the pregnancy without his permission, while he experiences the decision as the destruction of his unborn child and as proof that he has been denied authority over what he calls his flesh and blood. The resulting grief is inseparable from anger, guilt, family resentment, and the question of whether Lin Yanche has any moral standing to mourn what he failed to protect.

The Loss and the Dispute over Consent

Su Qingrou terminates the pregnancy with Lin Yanche, an act that he describes in furious terms as her taking away his child without permission. His reaction makes the pregnancy a contested territory: he understands the loss through paternal grief and violated entitlement, whereas Su Qingrou’s decision is presented as an exercise of control over her own body and future. The disagreement therefore exceeds the question of whether the child might have survived. It becomes a conflict over who may decide, who must bear the consequences, and whether emotional attachment can establish a right to command another person’s reproductive choice.

Su Xiangwan responds to Lin Yanche’s outrage with deliberate moral resistance. She says that, in the same circumstances, she would have done the same, refusing to accept his anger as self-evidently righteous. Her judgment is shaped by the history between Lin Yanche and the Su family: his conduct has contributed to the family’s devastation, and Su Xiangwan herself was forced to sell herself. From that perspective, Lin Yanche’s sudden concern for the lost child cannot be separated from his earlier failures. The child is not only an object of grief; it is also evidence invoked by a man whom Su Xiangwan considers responsible for the suffering that made the decision understandable.

Lin Yanche’s Grief and Moral Accusation

Lin Yanche’s anger exposes how completely he had invested the lost child with emotional meaning. He is furious that Su Qingrou acted without consulting him, and his rage carries both bereavement and a demand to be recognized as a father. Yet the narrative repeatedly places that grief beside his lack of responsibility. During the period when he and Su Qingrou were preparing to remarry, he had not actually ended his relationship with Song Yun’er. He also suspected matters surrounding the earlier child Su Qingrou had lost while failing to accept responsibility for his own conduct. Su Xiangwan therefore identifies a contradiction at the heart of his mourning: Lin Yanche wants the authority and emotional status of a father after behaving in ways that made trust and reconciliation impossible.

Su Xiangwan calls attention to the price of turning his behavior into a public moral identity. If Lin Yanche continues to act as he does, his reputation as a scoundrel will become deserved rather than merely alleged. His pursuit of Su Qingrou cannot erase the consequences of his dealings with Song Yun’er, just as his pain over the child cannot erase the circumstances in which Su Qingrou made her decision. The loss thus becomes a test of whether remorse can arrive late and still claim moral priority. Lin Yanche’s suffering is real, but the text refuses to let suffering automatically absolve him.

Su Qingrou’s Exhaustion and Withdrawal

For Su Qingrou, the lost child is bound to emotional exhaustion rather than a simple declaration of victory or revenge. When Su Xiangwan fears that she and Lin Yanche will quarrel again, Su Qingrou says that she is tired and no longer wants to continue playing with him. Her words suggest that the relationship has become a repetitive contest in which love, accusation, and punishment replace safety. She can feel that Lin Yanche truly cares about the child she lost, but recognizing his feeling does not restore the relationship or make him qualified to claim her sympathy.

The difference between recognition and reconciliation is crucial. Su Qingrou does not deny that Lin Yanche is affected; instead, she treats his concern as insufficient because it comes after betrayal, family damage, and the collapse of trust. Her withdrawal is therefore both protective and mournful. She rejects the demand that she comfort the man whose conduct helped make their shared future unlivable, while still acknowledging that the child matters to him. The state of loss holds these contradictory truths together rather than resolving them.

Family Trauma and Repeated Vulnerability

The pregnancy loss enters a wider pattern of family trauma. Su Xiangwan remembers that her mother had a terminal illness and chose death rather than implicating the family. As a child, Su Xiangwan drew an image of her parents holding her hands; after seeing it, her mother walked onto the balcony. This memory gives the later dispute over Su Qingrou’s child an additional context: reproduction, family survival, illness, guilt, and self-destruction are repeatedly joined in the sisters’ history. The lost child is not experienced in an emotionally empty world. It activates older fears about family collapse and the damage created when vulnerable people are left to make impossible decisions alone.

The surrounding plot also links bodily vulnerability to concealment and delayed knowledge. Lu Xun recounts that he was kidnapped at twelve, drugged by his captors, and nearly killed, leaving him resistant to medication. Later, Su Xiangwan collapses from severe fever before she can press an elevator button, and Lu Xun responds with anxious protection. These episodes do not replace Su Qingrou’s reproductive trauma, but they illuminate the book’s recurring concern with bodies whose suffering is hidden, disputed, or discovered only after danger has escalated. In each case, intimate relationships are tested by the gap between what one person knows, what another chooses to reveal, and who is allowed to decide what happens next.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

The lost child remains a permanent measure of the relationship between Su Qingrou and Lin Yanche. Lin Yanche’s grief intensifies his pursuit, but it cannot restore the pregnancy or undo his earlier failures. Su Qingrou’s decision gives her a boundary against his possessiveness, yet it also leaves her carrying the emotional consequences of a choice made amid family crisis and relational betrayal. Their conflict consequently refuses a clean division between victim and aggressor: Lin Yanche is wounded by the loss, while Su Qingrou is entitled to make the decision and is nevertheless surrounded by grief, accusation, and pressure.

The state also exposes the novel’s recurring tension between love and control. Lin Yanche treats the child as proof of a bond that should have bound Su Qingrou to him; Su Qingrou treats the termination as a refusal to let that bond determine her future. Su Xiangwan’s defense of her sister shifts the episode from private sorrow into a family judgment on male entitlement, hypocrisy, and responsibility. The child’s absence becomes more powerful than a conventional presence: it governs arguments, reveals the unequal burdens carried by the sisters, and demonstrates that affection cannot be separated from consent, accountability, or the material consequences of betrayal.