Duan Zhengchun and A'Zhu

Duan Zhengchun and A'Zhu are father and daughter separated in infancy, a kinship revealed only after A'Zhu has unknowingly placed herself between him and Xiao Feng’s revenge. Their relationship is therefore defined by the gap between blood ties and lived familiarity: the tokens intended to reunite them survive, but recognition comes too late to give father and daughter a shared life.

Separation and the marks of kinship

Duan Zhengchun and Ruan Xingzhu had two daughters, A'Zhu and A'Zi, one year apart. Because Duan Zhengchun was already married and Ruan Xingzhu feared her strict father’s response to the relationship, the parents sent the girls to be raised elsewhere. They did not simply abandon the possibility of recognition: each child received a gold lock, and each was marked with the character Duan on her left shoulder. These tokens preserved a path back to the family even while the children grew up apart from their parents.

A'Zhu was just over a year old when she was sent away. She could not recognize either parent by face, and the family that raised her knew only that her mother’s surname was Ruan. She consequently grew up without knowing that her own surname was Duan or that Duan Zhengchun was her father. The separation was not a relationship she could remember; it was a concealed history that shaped her identity before she had the means to understand it.

Recognition through A'Zi

The family’s recognition of A'Zi first brings the hidden parentage into view. At a bamboo house, Duan Zhengchun sees the gold lock recovered from A'Zi and reacts with shock. Ruan Xingzhu explains that she had also marked the girl’s left shoulder. When Duan Zhengchun finds the matching identifying mark, he understands that the young woman is his daughter. The scene’s signs are material and specific: a gold lock and a mark on the shoulder give certainty where the family has had only absence.

A'Zhu is present, but she conceals what the discovery means to her. Xiao Feng notices her tears and trembling, and briefly believes she grieves for A'Zi, who appears to have died. In fact, A'Zhu has recognized in her sister’s mark the same family sign carried on her own shoulder. A'Zhu later explains that both gold locks bear twelve characters; the poem on hers contains the name of her mother, Ruan Xingzhu. The pair of locks, given by Duan Zhengchun to Ruan Xingzhu and tied around the girls’ necks, joins the sisters to their parents and to one another across years of separation.

A daughter’s discovery and choice

A'Zhu learns the full account by overhearing Duan Zhengchun and Ruan Xingzhu speak with A'Zi. Their conversation confirms that the parents had abandoned both daughters and that Duan Zhengchun had hoped to find and bring A'Zhu back. The discovery changes the meaning of the appointment that has already brought A'Zhu into danger: Xiao Feng is seeking revenge for the deaths of his family, and she knows that the man he expects to meet is her newly identified father.

Rather than ask Xiao Feng to give up his revenge, A'Zhu takes his appearance and tells Duan Zhengchun that the meeting at the bluestone bridge has been canceled. She then takes Duan Zhengchun’s appearance and goes to meet Xiao Feng herself. Her action prevents the father she has only just discovered from receiving the blow intended for him, but it leaves her gravely wounded. The consequence is devastatingly ironic: the daughter has acted to save her father before their relationship can become one of mutual recognition, and Duan Zhengchun does not know that the person who met Xiao Feng in his place was A'Zhu.

Kinship, mistaken responsibility, and loss

As A'Zhu explains what she has learned, she tells Xiao Feng that Duan Zhengchun is her father and that the mark on her shoulder matches A'Zi’s. She also argues that a person may kill without intending the harm that follows: Xiao Feng did not mean to hurt her, just as Duan Zhengchun’s actions had brought about the deaths of Xiao Feng’s parents without being his deliberate intention. Her appeal links the newly discovered father-daughter bond to the larger conflict of revenge, but it does not erase the losses on either side.

A'Zhu dies from the wound she received while disguised as Duan Zhengchun. The relationship ends in recognition rather than reunion: her father’s long hope of finding his daughter is disclosed, but the evidence provides no scene of his learning that she had found him or of the two sharing their identity openly. The gold locks and matching marks establish the family connection; A'Zhu’s final choice makes that connection consequential, while leaving its ordinary life together unrealized.

Narrative significance

The story introduces kinship as something carried by objects and bodily signs when memory and upbringing cannot supply it. A'Zhu’s lock, the character on her shoulder, and A'Zi’s matching mark make the family history legible, but they cannot restore the years in which father and daughter lived apart. Recognition arrives at the point when A'Zhu must act on the relationship, not inhabit it.

That timing turns the reunion plot into a tragedy of mistaken identity and unintended harm. Duan Zhengchun’s daughter takes his place because she understands both his newly revealed importance to her and Xiao Feng’s need for vengeance. Yet the substitution protects the father without giving him knowledge of the sacrifice. The relationship thus binds the novel’s questions of family, revenge, and accidental injury: discovery changes what A'Zhu is willing to do, but comes too late to undo the consequences.