Crossing the river and destroying the bridge

“Crossing the river and destroying the bridge” describes the act of using another person’s help to reach safety or advantage and then severing the relationship that made that passage possible. The expression is given its sharpest dramatic force by Lu Xun’s accusation that Su Xiangwan wants to end their marriage after benefiting from it. It therefore links a familiar image of betrayal to the novel’s larger conflicts over marital status, financial capital, sexual obligation, and the right to leave a coercive relationship.

Meaning and Dramatic Use

The expression appears when Lu Xun tells Su Xiangwan that he will not leave her simply because she has made a promise to Lin Yanche. He accuses her of crossing the river and destroying the bridge, presenting her wish to withdraw from him as an act of ingratitude rather than an independent decision. His complaint also contains a claim of emotional entitlement: because he believes he has treated her well, he interprets her resistance as bullying him and as an abuse of his devotion.

Su Xiangwan’s reply exposes the instability of that accusation. She questions whether Lu Xun can truly be called kind to her, then refuses to explain further as embarrassment overtakes her. The exchange leaves the expression suspended between two meanings. For Lu Xun, it names a wife’s supposed betrayal of the husband who supported her; for Su Xiangwan, the same relationship is difficult to classify as simple kindness because affection and control are entangled within it.

Marriage, Money, and Debt

The expression is reinforced by the couple’s dispute over divorce and property. Su Xiangwan says that she will take none of Lu Xun’s property or alimony and proposes converting his five hundred million in capital into shares and returning it with interest. Her offer is an attempt to settle the financial account so that the marriage cannot be represented as a favor she must repay indefinitely. She also treats their sexual relationship as something that cannot justify permanent ownership of her, even though her phrasing remains charged by the coercive logic surrounding the marriage.

Lu Xun rejects her accounting. He mocks the idea that she could be worth five hundred million merely because he slept with her several times, turning the financial discussion into a contest over bodily value and emotional leverage. Su Xiangwan counters by invoking his willingness to give away tens of billions of land in another romantic context, thereby exposing a double standard in the value Lu Xun assigns to desire. The bridge in the expression is consequently not merely emotional: it is built from money, property, sex, and the unequal power to define what one person owes another.

Betrayal and Retaliation Across the Plot

The expression belongs to a wider pattern of relationships in which assistance becomes a weapon after intimacy has broken down. Song Yun’er describes herself as abandoned and admits that she has received retribution for her own actions, while Lu Xun responds with cold mockery. Her appeal to his past connection with her does not restore trust; instead, shared history becomes evidence that each believes the other has failed a prior obligation.

A more violent version of the same logic appears in Lin Yanche’s threat against Su Qingrou. When she tries to leave his manor, he threatens to ensure that Jin Zhengnan will never leave the Hospital. The threat makes departure itself an act punishable through harm to another person. What might look like a bridge between former partners becomes a trap: the past relationship is invoked not to support freedom but to prevent it.

The pattern also reaches the body. Su Xiangwan develops a fever after becoming ill overnight, and later Mo Beiyu condemns Lu Xun for having tortured his woman until she fainted beside the road. His accusation frames Lu Xun’s claim of marital authority as a betrayal of the very person he purports to possess and protect. In this context, the expression’s moral vocabulary is deliberately unstable: a person may be accused of abandoning a benefactor while the alleged benefactor has already violated the obligations of care.

Family Strategy and Thematic Significance

The expression’s logic extends beyond romance into family and corporate strategy. Su Qingrou proposes a preliminary engagement ceremony with Jin Zhengnan, primarily for the benefit of their two companies, and reassures Su Xiangwan that they have a brother who can shield them from Lin Yanche. Here, relationships are organized as bridges between families and businesses, but those bridges are also defensive structures that can be threatened, repurposed, or withdrawn.

As a recurring image, “Crossing the river and destroying the bridge” crystallizes the novel’s suspicion of relationships defined by possession and repayment. Lu Xun uses it to demand continuity from Su Xiangwan, but her attempt to return his capital and refuse alimony challenges the assumption that material support creates an enduring claim over her. The expression therefore works both as an accusation within the story and as an ironic description of the story’s power structures: people condemn abandonment while repeatedly turning love, protection, marriage, and family loyalty into instruments of pressure.