Manager Wu

Manager Wu is the discreet but indispensable aide attached to Lu Xun’s household and circle of power. He appears whenever authority must be translated into action: sending a departing guest away, arranging transport, accompanying vulnerable people, closing a car door, carrying out instructions, or reporting a concealed medical crisis. His importance lies less in personal ambition than in reliable execution. Through him, Lu Xun’s commands acquire practical reach, while the novel’s private world of marriage, illness, jealousy, and danger is supported by an organized network of servants, drivers, bodyguards, and watchers.

Identity and Function

Manager Wu is addressed both formally as Manager Wu and familiarly as Old Wu. The two forms of address establish his position between professional subordinate and trusted household elder. He is close enough to receive direct instructions from Lu Xun, yet disciplined enough to carry them out without challenging the hierarchy that gives those instructions force. When Lu Xun decides that Song Yuner should leave, he does not personally escort her; he calls for Manager Wu and orders him to take her wherever she wants to go. The scene makes Manager Wu the executor of a social boundary: Lu Xun’s refusal to retain Song Yuner becomes an actual departure because Old Wu is there to arrange it.

His work also extends into ordinary domestic management. When Su Xiangwan is found alone in the garden hammock, Lu Xun suggests having dinner with her, and Manager Wu’s presence is part of the household environment in which such invitations can be made. Later, when Shen Yiyun remains behind and Lu Xun prepares to leave, he instructs Old Wu to take her wherever she wishes. Manager Wu immediately reassures Lu Xun that the arrangement will be handled and tells Shen Yiyun to inform him if she wants to go out. His service is therefore not limited to transportation; it includes anticipating movement, preserving propriety, and making sure that no guest is left without an authorized route home.

Executor of Lu Xun’s Authority

Manager Wu’s obedience gives Lu Xun’s private rules the force of an informal governing system. Lu Xun negotiates with Lin Yanche over the East District land and demands that Lin Yanche stop interfering in his affairs with Susu. Manager Wu is not the negotiator, but his role belongs to the same structure of delegated power: Lu Xun decides the terms, while people such as Old Wu make those terms operative beyond the level of speech. The arrangement shows how the household functions through commands, servants, drivers, security personnel, and personal agreements rather than through formal institutions alone.

This delegated authority becomes especially clear when the police investigate the circumstances surrounding Su Xiangwan’s collapse. The police leader says surveillance showed that a young woman brought Mrs. Lu back to her apartment and proposes handing her over after contacting the family. Manager Wu is part of the practical chain by which the family can reclaim responsibility for Su Xiangwan. His presence in this context places him at the boundary between official procedure and private intervention: the police describe what the law and surveillance have established, while Lu Xun’s household remains ready to take charge of the woman’s care.

Manager Wu also accompanies Lu Xun during the dangerous journey to Yan City. Lu Xun and Lin Yanche fly there after Chu Fei’s men have calculated their arrival and are waiting at the airport. Lu Xun has brought many people, so the group does not fear that its safety will be threatened. Although the evidence does not assign Manager Wu a combat role, his place within this traveling entourage reflects the same logistical structure that supports Lu Xun’s power in safer settings. He helps transform a volatile confrontation into an organized operation rather than an isolated personal gamble.

Care, Crisis, and Invisible Labor

The novel repeatedly places Manager Wu near acts of care, even when Lu Xun or another character receives the emotional credit. When Mo Beiyu feeds Su Xiangwan water because she has been feverish for two days, the scene foregrounds intimate bodily assistance. Manager Wu’s broader function parallels this labor on an institutional scale: he ensures that people are moved, accompanied, returned home, and kept within the protective perimeter of the household. His service is less visibly tender than Mo Beiyu’s feeding, but it is equally necessary to the story’s system of survival.

At a banquet, Gordon secretly tells Lu Xun that someone saw Madame go to the bathroom to vomit. Manager Wu is among the staff and companions who make it possible for Lu Xun to respond immediately. Lu Xun rushes to her, carries her away, and instructs the others to return home as soon as possible. Manager Wu closes the car door for Lu Xun and the people accompanying him before going back to the driver’s seat and driving away. The gesture is small, but it reveals a complete sequence of practical care: information reaches Lu Xun, Lu Xun takes physical responsibility for Su Xiangwan, and Manager Wu secures the vehicle and directs the return journey.

This labor is not always gentle in tone. On the way back to Jingshan Villa, Lu Xun endures Su Xiangwan’s drunken, restless attacks while Manager Wu continues talking about Shen Yiyun. After Lu Xun warns her for the third time not to move, Manager Wu finally stops nagging. Lu Xun then tells him that he has talked too much that day. The exchange gives Old Wu a rare comic edge. He is not a silent machine; he can be intrusive, talkative, and socially familiar enough to irritate his employer. Yet his chattering also belongs to his caretaking role, because he is monitoring and discussing the people around Lu Xun even while driving them home.

Relationships and Interpersonal Position

Manager Wu’s relationship with Lu Xun is built on trust expressed through obedience. Lu Xun allows him to drive, transport guests, receive urgent instructions, and remain close during emotionally charged situations. At the same time, Lu Xun’s sharp response when Manager Wu talks too much shows that the relationship retains a clear hierarchy. Old Wu can speak freely up to a point, but Lu Xun remains the one who decides when conversation ends and action begins.

His relationship with Shen Yiyun is more openly service-oriented. When Lu Xun leaves, Manager Wu is told to take her wherever she wants, and he promptly tells her to notify him if she wishes to go out. Shen Yiyun responds with dimmed eyes and dejection when Lu Xun departs, suggesting that Manager Wu’s efficient assistance cannot replace the emotional attention she wanted from Lu Xun. This contrast is important: Old Wu can solve the problem of where she will go, but he cannot satisfy the desire to be chosen or accompanied by the person she loves.

Manager Wu also stands in relation to Su Xiangwan as part of the protective household surrounding Mrs. Lu. He helps return her after illness, drives her and Lu Xun away from the banquet, and participates in the arrangements that keep her physically connected to the family’s resources. The evidence does not show him expressing an independent emotional bond with her; his care is mediated through duty to Lu Xun and the household. That distance distinguishes his service from the possessive intimacy that characterizes Lu Xun’s marriage.

Narrative Role and Significance

Manager Wu functions as a logistical anchor in a plot dominated by emotional volatility. Characters faint, flee, vomit, quarrel, become jealous, or face threats, while Old Wu sends them home, drives the car, closes the door, and carries out the next instruction. His actions create continuity between scenes that might otherwise remain disconnected. A departure from a meal, a late-night visit to the Su Family Residence, a trip to Yan City, and an emergency return from a banquet all rely on someone capable of turning emotional decisions into movements through space.

He also embodies the novel’s recurring fusion of care and control. Transportation can be protection, but it can also enforce who leaves and who returns. Household service can express concern, but it also places vulnerable people inside Lu Xun’s sphere of authority. Manager Wu himself does not appear to formulate these rules; he administers them. That makes him a revealing figure in the story’s informal governance: the emotional world is not sustained by declarations alone, but by the people who execute them with cars, doors, schedules, messages, and watchful presence.

The character remains largely stable rather than undergoing a transformative arc. His consistency is precisely his narrative value. As Lu Xun’s relationships become more strained and the surrounding conflicts grow more dangerous, Manager Wu continues to perform the practical work that holds the household together. He is therefore a supporting character whose significance accumulates through recurrence. Each individual task seems minor, but together they establish him as the dependable infrastructure of Lu Xun’s private power and the quiet custodian of the crises that power continually produces.