Lu Xun’s Ban on Su Xiangcheng’s Socializing with Foreign Businessmen

Lu Xun’s Ban on Su Xiangcheng’s Socializing with Foreign Businessmen marks a decisive shift in the balance between professional initiative and marital authority. Su Xiangcheng is permitted to demonstrate her ability at a banquet for foreign merchants, but once Lu Xun sees how readily the work places her in situations involving alcohol, flattery, and unpredictable men, he turns concern into prohibition. The rule is therefore not an isolated workplace instruction: it is another expression of Lu Xun’s effort to regulate the risks surrounding his wife and to keep her within boundaries he can supervise.

Circumstances and Immediate Cause

The restriction follows Su Xiangcheng’s assumption of responsibility in the Imperial Group Public Relations Department. Gordon informs her that Lu Xun has a meeting that evening and needs two people from the department. Su Xiangcheng recognizes that she does not strictly need to handle the assignment herself, yet she chooses to do so because a new official should take responsibility. The banquet’s foreign merchants do not know her personally or understand her true identity, a circumstance that she regards as helpful to her performance because it allows her to work without the burden of prior expectations.

The assignment quickly demonstrates both her competence and the danger Lu Xun perceives. Su Xiangcheng’s tolerance for alcohol has improved enough that Lu Xun cannot bring her down with two cups, but liquor makes her more boisterous. Her behavior entertains the foreign businessmen, and she ultimately joins her department in drinking the other party under the table. Lu Xun watches throughout the evening while Su Xiangcheng handles the practical aftermath, arranging for the merchants to leave in an orderly fashion. Her performance surprises him: she is not merely surviving the gathering but managing it.

How the Ban Operates

Lu Xun’s first explicit response is framed as a warning rather than a formal company regulation. In the carriage, he reminds Su Xiangcheng that social gatherings will occur every day and that such work is not something for which she should put her life on the line. The wording makes physical danger the stated justification, but the surrounding exchange reveals a broader concern. Su Xiangcheng jokes about the handsome foreign man and suggests that she had to work hard because looking at him too often might make Lu Xun angry. Lu Xun answers by teasing her taste, yet his reaction is not limited to jealousy or humor.

The consequence is immediate and categorical: from that day forward, social interactions with foreign merchants are no longer to be assigned to Su Xiangcheng. Lu Xun’s ban removes the specific class of engagements in which she has just proven herself capable. It also shows the way his authority functions in their relationship. He does not negotiate a schedule, establish a safety protocol, or distinguish between different kinds of business gatherings. He determines that the activity itself is no longer available to her, replacing professional discretion with a personal command.

Protection, Possession, and Marital Authority

The ban belongs to a larger pattern in which Lu Xun uses restrictions as a form of protection. Elsewhere, when negotiating with Lin Yanche, he states that his condition is that Lin Yanche must never interfere in his affairs with Su Qingrou if Lin Yanche wants Su Xiangcheng to leave him. Su Xiangcheng realizes that Lu Xun is willing to pursue the East District land dispute for her sake and to use a major commercial interest to force Lin Yanche to sever his ties with her. That exchange clarifies the logic behind the foreign-business restriction: Lu Xun repeatedly treats threats to the women connected to him as matters requiring decisive intervention, even when intervention means imposing terms on others or on Su Xiangcheng herself.

His conduct also places care beside possession. The warning that she should not risk her life acknowledges her vulnerability, while the final prohibition denies her the freedom to decide which professional risks she is prepared to accept. The rule protects Su Xiangcheng by narrowing her choices. In this sense, it resembles the other marital expectations associated with Lu Xun, including his insistence that his wife obey him and his resistance to separation. Affection is expressed through surveillance, intervention, and control rather than through confidence that Su Xiangcheng can set her own limits.

Networks of Informal Control

The rule’s force becomes clearer when set beside the novel’s other systems of authority. Lu Xun’s world is governed not only by official institutions but also by personal commands, family status, assistants, bodyguards, and private agreements. When Song Yun’er leaves a meal, Lu Xun does not ask her to stay; instead, he calls Manager Wu and orders him to take her wherever she wants to go. The gesture is courteous on its surface, yet it still shows Lu Xun directing movement through a subordinate. His authority travels through people who carry out his decisions.

The same structure appears when a police leader reports that surveillance showed a young woman bringing Mrs. Lu back to her apartment. The police intend to hand the women over after contacting the family, while Liu Xi worries that Mo Beiyu’s good intentions might be misunderstood and create trouble. The incident contrasts formal law enforcement with Lu Xun’s personal claim over Mrs. Lu. The ban on foreign-business socializing belongs to this same overlapping order: professional spaces, family protection, private marriage, and institutional authority continually bleed into one another, and Lu Xun’s command can determine Su Xiangcheng’s conduct without requiring a public rule.

Significance in Su Xiangcheng’s Development

Su Xiangcheng’s performance at the banquet gives the ban its irony. She is not forbidden because she has failed. On the contrary, she drinks more effectively than before, wins the foreign merchants’ laughter, helps her department overwhelm the opposing side in the drinking contest, and organizes the guests’ departure. Her competence creates the very evidence that makes Lu Xun feel he must intervene. The stronger she appears in the public-relations arena, the more clearly he sees the social world as a field in which she may be admired, approached, or placed in danger.

The rule consequently limits one avenue of Su Xiangcheng’s independence just as she begins to claim a professional identity. Her decision to take responsibility is an attempt to prove that she deserves her position; Lu Xun’s response acknowledges her effectiveness but refuses to leave the consequences entirely in her hands. The ban preserves her from the gatherings he considers hazardous, yet it also reminds her that advancement within the Imperial Group remains entangled with the authority of her husband. Professional achievement brings recognition, but marital power decides which forms of achievement she may continue to pursue.