Ruan Xingzhu and A'Zhu

Ruan Xingzhu and A'Zhu are mother and daughter separated in infancy by a family crisis and reunited only after A'Zhu recognizes the identifying mark her mother had left on her. Their relationship is shaped by that long separation: the signs intended to make recognition possible eventually reveal their kinship, but too late to restore the years they lost or prevent A'Zhu’s death.

Separation and the signs of kinship

Ruan Xingzhu and Duan Zhengchun had a daughter, A'Zhu, but she was given to another family when she was a little over a year old. Ruan Xingzhu and Duan Zhengchun had not been married to one another, and their separation followed a quarrel when he wished to return to Dali. Ruan Xingzhu feared that her strict maternal grandfather would kill her if he learned of the relationship, so she could not bring her daughters home. She and Duan Zhengchun left identifying marks on the girls: a red character for Duan on each daughter’s shoulder, and gold locks that could also help establish their identity.

The separation was not a simple disappearance without a trace. A'Zhu grew up knowing that her foster family had taken her in, but she did not know her biological parents or even what her mother looked like. Ruan Xingzhu, for her part, had given both daughters away and hoped the marks would allow them to recognize one another someday. The tokens preserved a route back to kinship, while the circumstances of the separation kept that kinship unknown.

Recognition at the bamboo house

The signs first become legible through A'Zi. At the bamboo house in the Square Bamboo Forest, Ruan Xingzhu takes the gold lock from the neck of the apparently lifeless young woman and calls Duan Zhengchun to examine it. She also tells him to check the mark on the girl’s left shoulder. Xiao Feng, who has seen a similar lock with A'Zhu, understands that the objects and marks identify the young woman as their daughter. He notices that the girl is not dead: her eyes move beneath closed lids, and her internal energy resists his touch. A'Zi has been feigning death.

A'Zhu recognizes the family connection and is overcome by what she sees, but she does not explain it to Xiao Feng at once. Later, she tells him that she had hidden behind the bamboo house and overheard Duan Zhengchun, Ruan Xingzhu, and A'Zi. She had also seen the red Duan character on A'Zi’s shoulder and knew that her own matching mark meant she, too, was their daughter. Recognition thus reaches A'Zhu not through a direct meeting with her mother, but through the discovery of her sister’s identity and the evidence their parents had left on both girls.

A daughter's discovery and appeal

A'Zhu explains to Xiao Feng that she and A'Zi are sisters, born a year apart, and that their parents sent them into other households after their relationship ended. She says she is in fact a Duan, although the family that raised her knew only that her mother’s surname was Ruan. Her account makes the marks on the girls’ shoulders more than physical identifiers: they preserve the family connection that their upbringing concealed.

A'Zhu’s new knowledge also shapes what she asks of Xiao Feng. She tells him that she has only one younger sister and asks him to watch over A'Zi, whom she fears may go astray. She imagines that, once recovered, she and Xiao Feng might ride beyond Yanmen Pass, hunt, and herd cattle and sheep, and wonders whether A'Zi would join them. Her appeal places the sisters’ newly discovered bond inside a hoped-for future: A'Zhu wants the relationship denied to them in childhood to continue through protection and companionship.

Bereavement and belated acknowledgment

That hoped-for future ends when Xiao Feng, acting under a fatal misunderstanding, kills A'Zhu. Ruan Xingzhu enters the house, sees A'Zhu’s body, and rushes to her daughter. Xiao Feng, dazed, calls himself guilty and asks Ruan Xingzhu to kill him. She answers that his death could not bring A'Zhu back, and reproaches him for killing her daughter when he meant to defend someone against an injustice.

The confrontation forces the hidden parentage into the open. When Xiao Feng asks what shameful mistake Ruan Xingzhu means, she tells him that both A'Zhu and A'Zi are her daughters and that she gave them to other people because she dared not take them home. Xiao Feng realizes that Duan Zhengchun’s reference to meeting a parentless child again had been about A'Zi, not himself. Ruan Xingzhu rejects the suggestion that her daughters’ abandonment was the only wrongdoing in her past, but her immediate grief centers on having given A'Zhu away.

As Xiao Feng prepares to leave carrying A'Zhu’s body, Ruan Xingzhu sees his anguish and says the mistake cannot be redeemed. Her hatred of him gives way, briefly, to grief and self-reproach; she blames herself for giving her daughter to others and breaks down in tears. Their relationship receives no ordinary reunion or reconciliation. Its final acknowledgment comes through loss: Ruan Xingzhu claims A'Zhu openly as her daughter only after she has been killed, and the recognition intended to reunite the family instead makes the cost of their separation unmistakable.