Chu Fei and Su Xiangcheng's sibling·one-sided love relationship

The relationship between Chu Fei and Su Xiangcheng is one of the book’s most persistent boundary formations: it is described through brotherly language, cousin-like social positioning, and an emotional intimacy that repeatedly approaches romantic confession. Chu Fei becomes a protective elder-brother figure for Su Xiangcheng, but his own statements reveal that the role also shelters an unfulfilled desire. The result is not a simple sibling bond, but a relationship in which kinship vocabulary offers safety and legitimacy while attraction keeps threatening to undo those boundaries.

Familial Language and Social Position

Chu Fei’s connection to Su Xiangcheng is framed through a family-like network rather than a straightforward courtship. Su Xiangcheng addresses him as an older brother, and she seeks his help in moments when her marriage to Lu Xun has become emotionally unmanageable. At the same time, the surrounding family structure repeatedly distinguishes blood kinship from nominal or adopted relations. Shen Yiyun, for example, is identified as the adopted child of Lu Xun’s uncle and therefore Lu Xun’s cousin in family terms, even though she is not related to him by blood. Lu Xun later argues that a relative connected only by name is still a man or woman outside the protection of genuine blood kinship. This distinction makes the story’s kinship language unstable: familial titles can organize social behavior, but they do not necessarily eliminate romantic possibility.

Chu Fei’s own family connection to Su Qingrou and his position within the wider network further complicate how Su Xiangcheng understands him. When Yun Yun introduces herself as Chu Fei’s daughter, the conversation treats the declaration of fatherhood as both familiar and playful, and Su Xiangcheng joins the laughter even while remembering that Lu Xun had also forced her to address him as a father. The scene places different forms of family language beside one another: biological or adopted family, joking paternal address, and the older-brother title Su Xiangcheng uses for Chu Fei. None of these labels remains entirely innocent once the narrative begins to expose the desires beneath them.

Confidant, Protector, and Emotional Shelter

Chu Fei becomes important to Su Xiangcheng because he can listen to her confusion without immediately imposing the same marital demands as Lu Xun. When she admits that she may have fallen in love with Lu Xun, she cannot decide whether she truly does not know her feelings or is afraid to acknowledge them. She says that she wanted to love him but did not dare to, that she had watched her sister suffer through love, and that she wanted to run even though she could not. Her marriage has left her unable to recover peace even after returning to her old home, so Chu Fei functions as the person to whom she can articulate the contradiction between attachment and escape.

Chu Fei answers by dividing marriage into two forms. One is an absolute promise of loving each other until death; the other is a life built through mutual respect and continued coexistence. He initially believes that Su Xiangcheng and Lu Xun might belong to the second form, but he judges them too young and impulsive to keep their relationship within that calmer arrangement. His analysis gives Su Xiangcheng a vocabulary for evaluating her marriage without simply denying its emotional force. He presents respect and shared life as healthier than a consuming, soul-stirring attachment, yet his advice is also colored by his own position: he is counseling her about the marriage he envies.

His care is expressed through direct physical reassurance as well as conversation. After Su Xiangcheng becomes distressed over Lin Yanche’s condition and apologizes for being muddle-headed, Chu Fei tells her to come closer so that he can embrace her. When she hesitates, he pulls her into his arms and assures her that he will no longer blame her. The gesture both confirms his role as a forgiving protector and exposes the intensity of his attachment. He does not merely offer an opinion; he absorbs her distress through bodily closeness, making care itself the medium through which his feelings become visible.

Unrequited Desire and Rivalry with Lu Xun

Chu Fei’s attraction is made explicit when he explains why Lu Xun is a threat. He recalls that another woman had worn the clothing of a close relative even though there was no actual kinship, and says that, more importantly, he liked her very much. He then tells Lu Xun that, from his perspective, Lu Xun is an eyesore. The statement converts a nominally familial or socially protected relationship into a triangular rivalry. Chu Fei is not merely concerned for Su Xiangcheng’s welfare; he wants a place in her emotional life that Lu Xun occupies.

Yet Chu Fei defines his pursuit differently from coercion. He says that he will not force a woman and will not hurry to obtain her, because he prefers the process of chasing her and wants it to last as long as possible. This claim separates his desired conduct from the possessive pressure associated with Lu Xun, but it does not make his position neutral. He still treats the relationship as a pursuit whose duration and emotional tension have value. His restraint is therefore both an ethical boundary and a strategy: by refusing immediate possession, he preserves an intimate space in which Su Xiangcheng may continue to depend on him.

The contrast with Lu Xun is sharpened by the different kinds of intimacy each man offers. Lu Xun’s marriage to Su Xiangcheng carries the authority of a husband’s title and the force of marital expectation. Chu Fei, by contrast, occupies the language of the older brother while admitting that he likes her and resenting her husband. Su Xiangcheng herself reinforces the marital boundary in a drunken encounter by identifying Lu Xun as her husband when he asks what their relationship is. Her answer confirms that, whatever confusion or vulnerability surrounds her, Lu Xun remains the recognized center of her marital identity. Chu Fei’s attraction consequently remains unfulfilled and structurally subordinate to the marriage he opposes.

The Relationship’s Limits and Narrative Significance

Chu Fei’s relationship with Su Xiangcheng gains its emotional force from the fact that neither side can occupy a completely stable category. Su Xiangcheng calls him brother, asks him to accompany her, and accepts his embrace when she is overwhelmed. Chu Fei responds with protection, interpretation, and patient pursuit, but he also admits that his interest is personal. The relationship thus turns kinship into a boundary that both protects intimacy and conceals its danger.

Its most revealing moment comes when Chu Fei asks whether Su Xiangcheng truly loves Lu Xun. She cannot answer with certainty, but she also cannot freely move toward Chu Fei; she describes herself as wanting to flee and being unable to do so. Chu Fei’s response is to send her back toward the garden and promise to keep the others warm, allowing her to leave while he remains behind. The action is a small act of self-denial: he helps her return to the marital and family space from which he might personally benefit if she withdrew, even as his expression and silence register the cost.

For Su Xiangcheng, Chu Fei represents an alternative to the marriage’s coercive intensity, but not necessarily a fully available freedom. His tenderness is less overtly controlling, and his insistence that he will not force her gives her room to speak and choose. Still, his love keeps the alternative emotionally charged. The relationship therefore serves as a counterpoint to Lu Xun’s possessive marriage while preserving the novel’s larger concern with the uncertain line between protection, dependence, family naming, and desire. Chu Fei can be the brother who steadies Su Xiangcheng, the rival who resents her husband, and the unrequited lover who waits for a possibility she does not clearly promise; the tension among these roles is the relationship’s defining condition.