Su Xiangcheng Becomes Acting Head of Imperial Public Relations

Su Xiangcheng Becomes Acting Head of Imperial Public Relations is a professional turning point that places Su Xiangcheng inside the PR Department of Imperial Corporation while its supervisor is absent. The appointment immediately unsettles the department: a young woman is brought in to restore order among employees who have grown idle, and her youth and beauty become grounds for gossip that she obtained the position through an affair with an executive, possibly Director Lu. The event therefore joins career advancement to the novel’s recurring struggle over autonomy, reputation, intimacy, and control.

Causes and Institutional Setting

The PR Department of Imperial Corporation has been operating without its supervisor for some time, and the absence has left the staff unusually undisciplined. When someone finally arrives to take charge, the new supervisor appears younger than everyone else, a detail that intensifies the employees’ laziness and disbelief rather than commanding automatic respect. Su Xiangcheng enters a workplace whose institutional vacancy has already become a social habit: the department is busy in principle, but its workers have become accustomed to avoiding accountability.

The appointment also follows a private domestic dynamic in which Lu Xun treats Su Xiangcheng’s work as an opportunity for continued proximity. Before the chapter formally turns to the department’s resistance, Lu Xun whispers that working no longer seems boring and invites her to rest with him in his lounge at noon. Su Xiangcheng understands what he is scheming and refuses to be easily drawn into it. Her new position thus has two simultaneous contexts: it is a serious assumption of corporate responsibility and another arena in which Lu Xun attempts to fold her professional life back into their intimate relationship.

Arrival and Immediate Resistance

Su Xiangcheng is prepared for opposition. Rather than being discouraged by the department’s reluctance, she regards the greater difficulty as making the situation more interesting. In the tea room, several women gossip openly, and word soon spreads through the company that a young and beautiful substitute supervisor has arrived. The department’s skepticism is framed not only as a judgment on her age but also as a comparison with a highly qualified deputy supervisor who was supposedly not considered suitable for the role. If someone with stronger credentials could not convince the staff, the gossip implies, a young woman has even less chance of doing so.

The employees’ assumptions quickly become sexualized. They speculate that Su Xiangcheng is having an affair with one of the executives and ask why else she would have been transferred there. The rumor then narrows toward Director Lu, although another speaker notes that Director Lu already has a fiancée reputed to be exceptionally beautiful. The exchange exposes the department’s refusal to recognize Su Xiangcheng first as an administrator: her authority is translated into a story about sexual access, executive favoritism, and competition among women.

Su Xiangcheng does not answer the gossip with a public emotional outburst. She enters the room in high heels, makes herself a cup of coffee, and asks whether the work has been completed while stirring it with her head lowered. The ordinary gestures are pointedly controlled. Coffee, heels, and the unfinished work become the visible markers of a woman who has entered a space that expected either an absent supervisor or an easily intimidated subordinate. The people who had been gossiping do not move, and their expressions reveal that they do not want to be instructed or corrected.

Authority, Marriage, and Reputation

The appointment makes Su Xiangcheng’s marital connection to Lu Xun impossible to separate from how the company reads her authority. The staff’s rumor that she may have been transferred because of an affair turns a professional posting into evidence against her, even though the available scene gives no support for the allegation. Their gossip demonstrates how institutional power is interpreted through gendered suspicion: a young woman’s advancement is treated as something requiring a private explanation, while the executive’s power remains the presumed source of the transaction.

At the same time, the event does not reduce Su Xiangcheng to a passive beneficiary of Lu Xun’s influence. She has long anticipated the department’s resistance, chooses to confront it directly, and refuses Lu Xun’s attempt to make the workplace an extension of his lounge. Her conduct creates a contrast between his possessive domestic playfulness and her public managerial role. Lu Xun can whisper an invitation, but the department requires Su Xiangcheng to establish an authority that cannot depend solely on his presence.

The scene also echoes the broader pattern in which care and control overlap. Elsewhere, Mo Beiyu feeds Su Xiangwan water when fever has left her too weak to sit up, while Lu Xun’s language toward Su Xiangcheng repeatedly combines affection with an expectation of access. In another domestic moment, Lu Xun insists on applying ointment to her despite her saying she will do it herself, and he speaks casually to a male friend about embracing his woman every day while dismissing concern over a small wound. Against this background, Su Xiangcheng’s professional appointment becomes significant because it gives her a role in which she is not merely being cared for, managed, or claimed: she must manage others.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The immediate consequence is a crisis of legitimacy inside Imperial Corporation’s PR Department. Su Xiangcheng inherits a team made idle by the supervisor’s absence, faces open noncompliance from employees who remain seated when questioned, and must convert a formal appointment into recognized authority. The evidence ends at the threshold of that contest, but the event’s dramatic function is clear: her title is granted before her command is accepted.

The appointment also transforms the meaning of visibility. Su Xiangcheng is no longer operating only within the protected or concealed space of her relationship with Lu Xun; she is now exposed to colleagues who judge her appearance, age, rumored intimacy, and qualifications. Her high heels and coffee are not ornamental details but the first signs of a public identity under scrutiny. The company’s response reveals that entering institutional power does not free her from the private narratives attached to her marriage; it makes those narratives circulate more widely.

As a plot movement, the event shifts Su Xiangcheng from domestic negotiation into organizational conflict. Lu Xun’s invitation to meet in his lounge presents work as another site for flirtation and possession, whereas the PR Department forces her to claim work as work. Her decision not to fall for his scheme and her readiness to confront the staff establish the central tension of the appointment: Su Xiangcheng must prove that she can act within Imperial Corporation without allowing either workplace gossip or marital intimacy to define the limits of her authority. The appointment therefore functions less as a reward than as a test, placing professional responsibility, gendered suspicion, and emotional independence in the same room.