Su Wan and Lu Xun's Marriage

Su Wan and Lu Xun’s Marriage is a relationship of both private intimacy and public complications: affection is expressed through everyday care and physical closeness, while trust is unsettled by concealed plans, jealousy, and blurred family boundaries. The marriage becomes a recurring negotiation over who may enter the couple’s domestic space, what must be disclosed, and how much control either spouse can claim.

Marriage in Public and Private

Lu Xun’s marriage is not equally visible to everyone around him. When Cheng Chuchu returns, she complains that he never told her he had married and did not come to the airport to meet her. Her surprise makes the marriage’s public concealment consequential: an old friend learns of it only after returning, and Lu Xun turns the missed welcome into a teasing exchange with her and Hua Shuo. The scene places his new marital status within an existing social circle rather than treating it as a purely private bond.

At home, the relationship appears in smaller rituals. During a rare day off, Lu Xun says he would rather spend time with his parents and wife than collect a friend from the airport. Su Wan is pleased by the answer, and their breakfast conversation carries the easy familiarity of domestic life, from soup dumplings to her preference for chili. This ordinary companionship contrasts with the suspicion and strategic maneuvering that periodically intrude on the marriage.

Trust, Jealousy, and Disclosure

The marriage is tested by an arranged appearance of infidelity. Su Qingrou later tells Su Wan that Lu Xun’s encounter with Song Yun’er had been discussed in advance by Lu Xun and Lin Yanche, at Lin Yanche’s request. She reasons that Lu Xun, normally cautious and self-disciplined, would not otherwise have become involved with Song Yun’er so readily. The disclosure changes the meaning of what Su Wan had seen: the apparent betrayal was part of a plan, but the fact that her husband participated in it still leaves her confronting how much had been decided without her knowledge.

A separate dispute over Shen Yiyun shows how quickly incomplete disclosure can revive earlier suspicions. Lu Xun explains that Shen Yiyun is the daughter of his adopted uncle and therefore his cousin, and that he arranged for her to stay in a house near the theater where she was performing. Su Wan connects the explanation to the earlier trouble involving Song Yun’er and objects that he should have told her proactively. Lu Xun accepts the criticism and promises to correct his behavior. The episode makes communication, rather than kinship terminology alone, the immediate issue: a relationship that Lu Xun regards as familial can still unsettle his wife when its circumstances are not shared with her.

That tension becomes explicit when Su Wan rejects the idea that a cousin-like label settles the matter. She argues that a woman related to a man only by name, rather than by blood, remains a woman, and that such a category cannot automatically put her beyond question. Her argument challenges the reassurance offered by family status and shows how the marriage’s boundaries are contested through competing definitions of kinship and trust.

Intimacy and Domestic Boundaries

Lu Xun’s response to Su Wan’s unease can be protective, but it also exposes the limits of his unilateral decisions. He tells her that, without asking her consent, he placed Song Yun’er in a guest room. The choice keeps Song Yun’er within the household while attempting to reassure his wife by separating her from the couple’s bedroom. His admission recognizes Su Wan’s stake in the arrangement, even though the decision had already been made for her.

Their physical relationship is depicted as intense and sometimes playful in its aftermath. In one domestic scene, Lu Xun finds Su Wan in the cloakroom, dressed only in underwear and reaching for clothes; he wraps his arms around her waist and lifts her, startling her. In another encounter, their intimacy shifts to his desk. Afterwards, no paper can be retrieved, and Su Wan remains crouched on the floor, unwilling to get up, while Lu Xun coaxes her to leave it to him. These scenes connect desire to the shared spaces of married life, where the bedroom, cloakroom, and work desk become settings for both closeness and disruption.

The relationship also includes practical care when intimacy gives way to vulnerability. After sleeping without clothes and kicking away the blanket, Su Wan wakes feverish, aching, and almost without strength. She calls Manager Wu and asks him to buy antipyretic medicine. The episode gives the marriage a bodily dimension beyond attraction: illness interrupts the household routine, and the people around her anticipate Lu Xun’s concern.

Marriage, Kinship, and Family Alliances

The couple’s boundaries sit within a wider network of family relationships. Su Qingrou sends Su Wan a picture book containing designs for clothes, including work that reconnects the sisters through fashion. That gesture arrives while Su Wan is still troubled by a wedding gown and the shadow left by what happened to it. Her attention turns from the injury to her marriage toward her sister’s creative work, showing how family intimacy can coexist with—and redirect—marital distress.

Su Qingrou also raises the prospect of a small engagement ceremony with Jin Zhengnan, explaining that it would chiefly serve the interests of their two companies. Su Wan accepts the idea but worries about Lin Yanche’s reaction; Su Qingrou answers that they have a brother. The exchange places the marriage’s emotional concerns alongside the sisters’ family and business alliances. Across these episodes, Su Wan and Lu Xun’s bond is neither isolated nor settled: it is repeatedly shaped by who is treated as kin, what is disclosed, and whether affection can be trusted when decisions affecting the household are made in advance.