Su Xiangwan and Lu Xun's European Honeymoon is significant because it turns an apparently romantic journey into a pressure chamber for the couple's marriage. Lu Xun presents the trip as time reserved for his wife, yet the honeymoon is interrupted by illness, the arrival of Lin Yanche and Song Yuner, and Lu Xun's continuing sense of responsibility toward Song Yuner. Its decisive effect is not simple leisure but revelation: the journey makes the couple's bond visible while showing that Lu Xun has not yet escaped the obligations created by his past.

A Public Promise of Marriage

Lu Xun announces that he and Su Xiangwan are going to Europe for their honeymoon the following week when Luo Jingjing attempts to invite him to a meal as thanks. He answers in a businesslike manner that personal arrangements have priority and directs official matters through his assistant. The exchange is brief, but it carries unusual public force. By naming Su Xiangwan as his wife and identifying the journey as a honeymoon, Lu Xun refuses to treat the marriage as merely private or provisional.

The announcement also closes a door on Luo Jingjing. She is left stunned and can only answer with agreement before watching Lu Xun and Su Xiangwan depart together. Her unwillingness in that moment establishes the trip as a visible sign of marital exclusivity: Lu Xun is not simply unavailable because of work, but because he has chosen to travel with his wife.

Italy and the Body's Reversal of Romance

The honeymoon quickly loses its idealized shape when Su Xiangwan catches a cold on the second day after Lu Xun leaves for Italy. The timing is sharply ironic. The trip is supposed to provide relaxation, yet almost immediately her body turns the journey into a scene of weakness and dependence. After they leave the plane, Lu Xun is described as repeatedly taking possession of her in the hotel and refusing to let her go, while she lies on the bed sneezing and complains that she hates him.

The contrast between erotic closeness and physical discomfort gives the honeymoon its unstable emotional rhythm. Lu Xun's desire for uninterrupted intimacy does not create an undisturbed romantic world; instead, the cold makes care, irritation, and intimacy occupy the same space. Later, when Su Xiangwan is weak, Lu Xun stops bullying her, strokes her hair, and speaks gently. Her vulnerability therefore changes his conduct without eliminating his possessiveness. The honeymoon repeatedly moves between playful control and protective tenderness.

Intrusion by the Past

The couple's private retreat is further disturbed when Lin Yanche arrives in Italy with Song Yuner. Lu Xun tells Su Xiangwan that Lin Yanche must have sensed or guessed something, and that Lin Yanche knows it is her birthday. The intrusion is not presented as a random interruption. It brings the unresolved network of former loyalties directly into the space Lu Xun meant to reserve for his marriage.

Lu Xun's response shows that he is divided rather than emotionally free. He feels guilty and resentful because the promised honeymoon has ended in this way, but he also hates himself for being unable to set aside his past kindness toward Song Yuner. His commitment to her is expressed as a moral obligation: even if he were to play with her countless times, he would not abandon her on the day she was abandoned. The honeymoon thus exposes the central contradiction in his marriage. Su Xiangwan receives his tenderness and the symbolic status of wife, yet Song Yuner still commands a claim on his conscience strong enough to redirect the trip.

Illness, Protection, and Marital Recognition

The broader events surrounding the honeymoon repeatedly connect intimacy with medical vulnerability. Lu Xun's own illness recurs in another crisis, forcing him to take a pill and spray medicine into his mouth before recovering after several deep breaths. His body, usually associated with authority and control, is shown to require concealment, medication, and rapid self-management. This physical limitation complicates his protective role: he is both guardian and someone whose health can suddenly fail.

Su Xiangwan's illness is also used by others to define the stakes of Lu Xun's choices. Lin Yanche warns him that she is unusually weak, that menstruation can leave her almost incapacitated, and that a cold can produce a fever lasting three days and three nights. The warning makes Lu Xun's heart ache and his face turn deathly pale. Whether delivered as cruelty or information, it converts the absent wife's body into an urgent moral summons. Lu Xun cannot remain in the emotional distance created by his obligations to Song Yuner once Su Xiangwan's survival appears uncertain.

That summons culminates in Lu Xun rushing to Su Xiangwan after violence and finding her frightened and trembling. He ignores the wounds on his own face, crouches down, and embraces her while assuring her that he is there. When she notices blood at the corner of his mouth and recognizes that he is injured, he kisses her instead of answering the question she was about to ask. The gesture places her safety above his own injury and gives the honeymoon's interrupted promise a physical continuation: despite every competing claim, his instinct is to return to and protect his wife.

The Honeymoon's Afterlife in the Plot

The European journey remains active in the story after the couple leaves it. Lu Xun later waits at the Hospital because Lin Yanche has been hospitalized and asks Su Xiangwan to join him so they can take her grandfather home together. The honeymoon's private itinerary has given way to medical emergencies, family duties, and confrontations, but its pattern persists: the couple's relationship is repeatedly tested when illness and obligation intrude.

The same pattern appears in the surrounding network of relationships. Su Qingrou is hospitalized with acute appendicitis and undergoes surgery to remove her appendix, placing a possible engagement ceremony under threat. Shen Yiyun is explained as Lu Xun's cousin through his uncle's adoption rather than blood, a clarification that becomes part of Su Xiangwan's dispute with him over women outside the marriage. Chu Fei later declares that he likes Su Xiangwan and regards Lu Xun as an eyesore, while insisting that he prefers the process of pursuit and will not force a woman. These confrontations show that the honeymoon does not end romantic rivalry; it establishes the marriage as the object around which rivals, relatives, and former attachments organize their claims.

Even in moments when Su Xiangwan is disoriented, the marriage remains the relationship through which Lu Xun seeks recognition. When he asks what their relationship is, she pulls off his shirt and answers flirtatiously that he is her husband. Her response reassures him because he is uncertain whether she knows who he is, and it makes the marital title both intimate and stabilizing. Later, she rejects the idea that a non-blood relative such as Shen Yiyun should be treated as harmless merely because of a family name, arguing that such a relative is still a man and a woman. The honeymoon's promise therefore develops into a broader demand for clear boundaries around marriage.

The journey's final significance is deepened by the revelation that Lin Yanche has liver cancer and is waiting for a suitable liver source, with death as the alternative. This information places the honeymoon within a world where love, family obligation, illness, and mortality cannot be separated. The trip begins as a declaration of marital happiness, but its consequences are measured through crises: a cold, recurrent illness, hospitalization, injury, rivalry, and the threat of death. Europe gives Lu Xun and Su Xiangwan a temporary shared horizon, yet the story makes clear that their marriage becomes meaningful precisely because that horizon is repeatedly breached.