Su Xiangwan Moves Back to the Su Family Ancestral Home

Su Xiangwan Moves Back to the Su Family Ancestral Home after a terse exchange with Lu Xun, transforming emotional distance inside their marriage into an actual change of residence. Lu Xun’s departure and her decision to pack her luggage make the move a visible assertion of withdrawal, while her return to her grandfather restores the Su family as a place of refuge during a period of marital strain.

The Immediate Break

Su Xiangwan spends the day in the garden hammock, aware that night is approaching but unwilling to go inside. When Lu Xun returns, he asks her to accompany him to his old home. She refuses, telling him to go alone and adding that, if he stays too late, he should remain there rather than return. Her answer is deliberately dismissive: when Lu Xun asks whether she wants him to live there, she replies that it makes no difference and turns away.

The exchange converts an invitation into a test of attachment and belonging. Lu Xun looks coldly at her back before leaving in dejection, and, unlike a temporary departure, he does not come back that night. The scene therefore shifts the relationship from tense cohabitation to physical absence. Su Xiangwan does not pursue him or soften her words; the silence after his departure supplies the immediate condition for the move that follows.

Return to the Family Home

The next morning, Su Xiangwan packs her luggage and moves back to the Su Family Ancestral Home. The act is practical as well as emotional: she does not merely threaten to leave or spend a night elsewhere, but gathers her belongings and relocates herself from Lu Xun’s household to her own family’s ancestral residence.

At the ancestral home, her grandfather is seated in the living room reading a newspaper. He notices the suitcase and frowns, yet does not press her for an explanation. Su Xiangwan then moves close to him and tells him that she has requested leave from Lu Xun and will stay with him for several days. The return thus places her under familial protection without presenting it as a permanent renunciation of the marriage. Its stated duration is limited, but its timing, immediately after Lu Xun’s overnight absence, gives it the force of a separation.

Emotional and Bodily Context

The move belongs to a broader pattern in which personal conflict is registered through the body as much as through speech. Su Xiangwan’s vulnerability is already apparent elsewhere when she develops a high fever, becomes so weak that she must ask Manager Wu to buy antipyretic medicine, and later faints at an elevator before she can press the button. These episodes make withdrawal from Lu Xun’s home more than a purely strategic gesture: the character is repeatedly shown as physically depleted while navigating emotional and familial pressure.

Her need for reassurance is also explicit in a later moment when she tells Lu Xun that she is frightened. He embraces her and assures her that he has been there all along. Against that promise of protection, the move back to the ancestral home carries an important contradiction. Lu Xun can offer immediate comfort, but the home she chooses after their rupture is the older family space, where her grandfather receives her without demanding disclosure. The action exposes the limits of reassurance when trust and cohabitation have already become unstable.

Family Trauma and Marital Conflict

The return is framed by a family history marked by abandonment, coercion, and unresolved grief. Su Xiangwan learns that her mother had a terminal illness and left the family because she did not want to implicate them; her grandfather believed she could not remember the circumstances, but Su Xiangwan recalls drawing her parents holding her hand before her mother walked onto the balcony. The ancestral home therefore represents both shelter and the site of memories that shaped her understanding of departure and loss.

Other relationships in the same network are likewise governed by unequal power. Su Qingrou is discovered weeping, bearing deep and shallow kiss marks after being confined, while a photograph shows Lin Yanche passionately embracing Song Yun’er at the very time in question. In another family discussion, Su Qingrou proposes holding an initial engagement ceremony with Jin Zhengnan, chiefly for the benefit of their two companies, and invokes the protection of a brother when the danger posed by Lin Yanche is raised. These surrounding conflicts make Su Xiangwan’s relocation part of a larger pattern: marriage, family position, corporate interests, and bodily vulnerability repeatedly determine where women can go and whom they can rely on.

Significance of the Move

Lu Xun’s own history helps explain why separation carries unusual weight. He recalls being kidnapped at twelve, drugged by his captors, and nearly losing his life; afterward, he says, he became resistant to all drugs. The memory is presented with emotional distance, yet it reveals an earlier experience in which safety depended on surviving other people’s control. His dejected departure and failure to return show the present relationship touching that older pattern without resolving it.

Su Xiangwan’s move consequently functions as a domestic turning point rather than a simple change of address. She rejects Lu Xun’s invitation, allows him to leave, and then reclaims the ancestral home as a temporary base. The action gives physical form to an emotional boundary: she remains connected to her family, informs her grandfather of her leave, and creates distance from Lu Xun without declaring the marriage ended. Its decisive significance lies in that ambiguity. The marriage’s conflict has become spatial, but the return also preserves a route back through family, memory, and time.