Imperial Public Relations Department's Opposition to Su Xiangcheng

Imperial Public Relations Department's Opposition to Su Xiangcheng is a public challenge to Su Xiangcheng's appointment as acting supervisor of Imperial Group's Public Relations Department. The confrontation turns workplace resentment into an organized appeal against her authority, yet it also becomes the moment when Su Xiangcheng stops being merely the woman brought into office by Lu Xun and demonstrates that she can impose rules, withstand hostility, and make the department answer to her.

Appointment and Immediate Suspicion

Su Xiangcheng's first day in the department is shadowed by the assumption that she obtained the position through intimacy with an executive rather than competence. She confronts the employees in the tea room while holding a cup of coffee, and, instead of pretending that the rumor does not exist, answers it with deliberately provocative candor: she says that she was supposedly born from an executive's sleep and challenges the staff to reproduce that supposed route to promotion. The remark does not calm the room. It makes the hierarchy of the department visible, because the employees are not only questioning her age and experience; they are questioning whether a woman attached to Lu Xun can claim professional authority independently of him.

The opposition is therefore both personal and institutional. Su Xiangcheng has been installed as an acting supervisor, but the department's ambitious employees treat the temporary title as evidence that she should not possess the power of a regular superior. Annie, the leading objector, presents herself as the voice of collective dissatisfaction and frames Su Xiangcheng's conduct as abuse of office. The dispute is not simply about whether a punishment was justified. It is about who has the right to define competence inside the department: the appointed supervisor, the established staff, or Lu Xun as the executive who placed her there.

Su Xiangcheng's Enforcement of Authority

Su Xiangcheng refuses to retreat when the employees remain idle and openly resist her direction. She asks why they are not working and warns them that they are waiting for punishment. When several continue to defy her, she declares that each will lose three months' salary, while also offering the possibility of an equally substantial bonus to those who can prove their ability. The policy is severe, but it is not presented as arbitrary destruction. It combines penalty with performance-based reward, making obedience part of a broader system in which the employees can avoid loss by producing results.

Annie immediately attacks the order itself, insisting that an acting supervisor has no right to record such punishments. Su Xiangcheng answers that the acting title is precisely the basis of her authority and tells Annie to report her if she refuses to accept it. That response changes the balance of the scene. Annie's complaint had depended on the expectation that Su Xiangcheng would be embarrassed into silence; instead, Su Xiangcheng converts the challenge into a test of institutional procedure. Annie can appeal upward, but she must do so after openly defying the supervisor.

The rest of the department follows Annie to Lu Xun's office, partly in solidarity and partly to watch whether the inexperienced supervisor can be removed. Their collective movement gives the dispute the appearance of a formal petition, but it also reveals the theatrical element of the rebellion: the employees want Lu Xun to confirm that Su Xiangcheng's appointment is illegitimate. Annie argues that Su Xiangcheng cannot convince the staff, has abused her authority, and should begin at the bottom before being allowed to supervise anyone.

Lu Xun's Judgment

Lu Xun does not immediately dismiss Su Xiangcheng's punishment or punish the employees for challenging her. While continuing to annotate a document, he asks whether there was a reason for Su Xiangcheng's decision. This question places the burden back on the complainants. Their claim that she acted out of embarrassment is treated as an assertion rather than an established fact, and the employees are compelled to defend their own version of events instead of relying on their numerical advantage.

When Annie demands that the people behind Su Xiangcheng be found and removed, Lu Xun refuses to authorize a purge based on one side's account. He warns that he will not begin a massacre merely because he has heard a single version of the dispute. His restraint is important because it distinguishes protection from indiscriminate favoritism: he does not erase the complaint, but neither does he allow the department to use collective pressure to strip Su Xiangcheng of her office. He orders everyone to leave and promises to investigate before making a decision.

The order appears neutral, but its effect favors Su Xiangcheng's continued authority. Lu Xun does not require her to rescind the salary deductions, submit to demotion, or apologize to Annie. His later smile, prompted by Su Xiangcheng's belief that she obtained the position merely by sleeping with an executive, adds a private layer to the institutional ruling. He understands the insult as a misunderstanding of both his intentions and her position, yet he allows her conduct to stand rather than openly converting the office into a personal gift.

Wider Pattern of Private Power and Protection

The conflict occurs within a larger pattern in which Lu Xun's private authority repeatedly shapes the lives and choices of others. He once used the East District land as leverage to force Lin Yanche to stop interfering in his affairs with Su Xiangcheng, making a commercial negotiation serve an intimate purpose. His control also appears in more personal forms: he sends Manager Wu to take Song Yun'er away when she leaves in anger, and he becomes the person others expect to provide rescue, punishment, or protection.

That pattern complicates the public-relations dispute. Su Xiangcheng's colleagues are not irrational to suspect that Lu Xun has given her unusual access, because his decisions elsewhere show that he is willing to mobilize business assets and subordinate personnel for personal objectives. At the same time, the department confrontation gives Su Xiangcheng a chance to act rather than simply be acted upon. She issues the punishment herself, accepts the possibility of investigation, and meets resistance without asking Lu Xun to speak in her place.

The surrounding plot repeatedly links power with bodily vulnerability and emotional dependence. Su Xiangcheng later suffers a high fever and collapses before reaching an elevator, while Lu Xun responds with alarm and protective control. He also comforts her after fear overwhelms her, telling her that he has been there all along. These episodes illuminate the contradiction at the heart of the workplace event: Su Xiangcheng is treated as someone protected by Lu Xun, yet the protection that shelters her can also make every independent achievement appear borrowed.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The immediate consequence is suspension of judgment rather than the employees' desired victory. Lu Xun orders an investigation, but he does not remove Su Xiangcheng or invalidate the three-month salary deductions. Annie's appeal therefore fails to produce an immediate reversal, and the department must return to work under the authority it had rejected. The scene leaves the staff's resentment unresolved, but it establishes that opposition alone will not displace Su Xiangcheng.

The event's decisive value shift is from presumed illegitimacy to contested legitimacy. At the beginning, Su Xiangcheng is reduced to a rumor about sleeping with an executive. By the end, the rumor still exists, but it no longer determines what she can do: she has exercised disciplinary power, made a conditional bonus offer, faced a formal complaint, and retained Lu Xun's procedural support. Lu Xun's intervention does not prove that she is free from his influence; it proves that his influence will not automatically be used to cancel her decisions.

As a narrative event, Imperial Public Relations Department's Opposition to Su Xiangcheng links the novel's recurring themes of obedience, control, marital status, and professional identity. Su Xiangcheng's struggle is not only to occupy a chair in a corporate office. It is to make that chair signify authority rather than possession, and to force both subordinates and readers to distinguish between a woman who is protected by a powerful man and a woman who can wield power in her own right.