Chu Fei and Lu Xun's Direct Confrontation in Yancheng

Chu Fei and Lu Xun's Direct Confrontation in Yancheng is a decisive confrontation fought through accusation, jealousy, and competing claims over Su Xiangwan. Chu Fei presents himself as both a romantic rival and a protective relative, while Lu Xun is forced to face the damage caused by his own earlier cruelty. The scene changes the balance between them: what begins as an inquiry about Su Xiangwan becomes an open challenge to Lu Xun's authority as her husband.

Causes and Background

The confrontation grows out of Chu Fei's concern for Su Xiangwan and his hostility toward Lu Xun's conduct. Lu Xun asks Chu Fei where Su Xiangwan is after hearing from Su Qingrou that she is with him. Chu Fei answers evasively, saying only that she is where she should be, a refusal that immediately places control of information in his hands. Lu Xun, already irritated by Chu Fei's smiling manner, warns that the conversation will end if Chu Fei continues to avoid the point.

The tension is also rooted in Lu Xun's past treatment of Su Xiangwan. Chu Fei recalls that Lu Xun bought her into his home but failed to treat her well, while his attention was complicated by childhood sweethearts, cousins, and other women. The most damaging episode was Su Xiangwan's flight from home in the middle of the night, after which she fainted beside the road. Lu Xun understands that Chu Fei's accusation is justified: his earlier excitement had driven him beyond restraint, and later regret could not erase what he had done. Su Xiangwan's silence was forgiveness, not forgetfulness; she still remembered that Lu Xun was the first man in her life.

The Confrontation in Yancheng

Chu Fei rejects Lu Xun's assumption that he is harmless. He asks whether Lu Xun truly fails to recognize him as a threat, then explains that he once had no blood relationship with a woman whose clothes resembled those of a close relative, but that he liked her intensely. The comparison makes his position deliberately provocative. He is not merely sheltering Su Xiangwan; he is announcing that his feelings give him a personal stake in opposing Lu Xun.

Chu Fei further states that Su Xiangwan should not have rejected him simply because he is her brother. Lu Xun counters that Chu Fei's feelings alone should have caused her to reject him from the beginning. The exchange exposes the moral and emotional instability of Chu Fei's claim: he speaks as a brother while pursuing the privileges of a suitor. Yet his ambiguity also gives his challenge force, because it allows him to attack Lu Xun simultaneously as a rival, a family member, and a man who has failed Su Xiangwan.

The argument turns when Lu Xun realizes that Chu Fei may be acting in support of Su Xiangwan. Chu Fei's remarks about Lu Xun's jealousy force Lu Xun to recognize that his own supposedly controlled attitude is not indifference. He has been cold toward Shen Yiyun, although she remains his cousin and he still cares about her, and Chu Fei uses that contradiction to suggest that Lu Xun's emotions are stronger and less settled than he admits. Lu Xun's stunned silence marks the scene's internal reversal: he enters seeking information about Su Xiangwan and ends up confronted with the evidence of his own attachment.

Claims, Threats, and Protective Violence

Chu Fei warns Lu Xun not to waste Su Xiangwan's good years. He argues that Lu Xun has no right to decide her marriage with a single command and tells him to stop injuring a good woman. His warning is not presented as a polite request. Chu Fei promises that Lin Yanche will never again be able to touch his blood sister, Warmth, and adds that, even without taking further action, he will not permit Lu Xun to bully Su Xiangwan again.

The concrete image of Su Xiangwan running out at night and collapsing by the roadside gives Chu Fei's accusation its greatest weight. It turns marital conflict into a question of bodily safety and human responsibility. Lu Xun's earlier behavior is no longer framed merely as romantic anger or an excess of possessiveness; it has produced a visible crisis in which Su Xiangwan's life and health were endangered. Chu Fei therefore claims a protective role, even as his own pursuit of Su Xiangwan remains ethically troubling.

Chu Fei also explains that he will not force a woman and is in no hurry to obtain what he wants. He prefers the chase and wants it to last. This distinction separates his declared method from Lu Xun's coercive control, but it does not make Chu Fei's desire harmless. His confidence that Su Xiangwan should not reject him because of their familial connection reveals an entitlement of his own. The confrontation thus sets two forms of possessive pursuit against each other rather than offering a simple opposition between villain and protector.

Revelations and Consequences

The scene makes Lu Xun's jealousy legible. Chu Fei's challenge exposes that Lu Xun's insistence on retaining Su Xiangwan as Mrs. Lu is not only a matter of status or habit. He reacts to the prospect of Chu Fei's pursuit because Su Xiangwan matters to him, even though his past conduct has repeatedly contradicted the tenderness he feels. Chu Fei's words strike Lu Xun like a public humiliation precisely because they name a truth Lu Xun has tried to control rather than acknowledge.

The confrontation also broadens the story's pattern of concealed trauma. Elsewhere, Su Xiangwan recalls that her mother had a terminal illness and walked onto a balcony after seeing a drawing of the family holding hands, a memory hidden beneath the family's mistaken belief that the child could not remember. Lu Xun, in turn, reveals that he was kidnapped at twelve, drugged by the kidnappers, and nearly lost his life before developing resistance to medicines. These disclosures explain why both characters respond to abandonment, danger, and helplessness through silence, control, or overprotection. Su Xiangwan's later collapse from fever at an elevator entrance and her frightened plea for Lu Xun's presence show how physical vulnerability and emotional fear repeatedly return to the surface.

In that wider pattern, Chu Fei's challenge functions as an external witness to harm that Lu Xun would prefer to keep inside the marriage. Chu Fei does not allow Su Xiangwan's forgiveness to erase the event, and he refuses to treat her silence as proof that no injury occurred. The immediate result is not reconciliation but pressure: Lu Xun must confront both his love for Su Xiangwan and the fact that his love has been expressed through possession, anger, and damage.

Narrative Significance

As a scene, the confrontation shifts the value at stake from romantic possession to accountability. Lu Xun begins with the apparent advantage of marital authority and access to Su Xiangwan, but Chu Fei reverses that advantage by controlling her whereabouts and speaking openly about Lu Xun's failures. The result is a change in Lu Xun's position: he remains powerful, yet his moral authority has been challenged in terms he cannot dismiss.

The encounter also crystallizes the novel's recurring conflict between love and freedom. Lu Xun wants Su Xiangwan to remain his wife, while Chu Fei claims to defend her freedom even as he declares his own desire to pursue her. Neither man offers an entirely clean alternative. The scene's force lies in that contradiction: Chu Fei's intervention protects Su Xiangwan from one form of domination while revealing another possible form of pressure, and Lu Xun's jealousy proves that the husband who once drove her away cannot simply treat her return as guaranteed. The direct confrontation in Yancheng therefore becomes a reckoning with the difference between keeping someone and caring for her.