Gu Huaian and Shen Lan

Gu Huaian and Shen Lan are linked by an old friendship that predates Gu Huaian’s relationship with Shen Tang. Their connection is not presented as a conventional romance: Gu Huaian has no interest in women, while Shen Lan is biologically female but attracted to women. That mutual absence of heterosexual interest helps explain why the two were able to remain close for a long time, with their friendship resting on familiarity and trust rather than romantic competition.

Friendship and Shared Disposition

Gu Huaian’s friendship with Shen Lan is framed through contrast. At the time of their earlier acquaintance, Gu Huaian was uninterested in women and Shen Lan was uninterested in men, creating a relationship in which neither had the romantic expectations that might otherwise complicate intimacy. The narrative treats this shared distance from heterosexual courtship as one practical foundation of their enduring friendship, while leaving the emotional history of the bond largely in the background.

Their familiarity also gives Gu Huaian unusually detailed knowledge of Shen Lan’s past. When he explains her circumstances to Shen Tang, he knows that Shen Lan cut ties with the Shen family, came to hate the Shen surname and her own lineage, and rarely disclosed her surname outside the family. He also knows that she spent years caring for her girlfriend and the girlfriend’s grandmother. This knowledge marks him as more than a casual acquaintance: he has remained close enough to understand the private history Shen Lan generally keeps concealed.

Shen Lan’s Trauma and Gu Huaian’s Assistance

Shen Lan’s estrangement from her family follows a painful history involving her girlfriend. She had imagined the small villa where she lived as a shared future home, but that future was destroyed when her girlfriend could no longer be part of it. In the aftermath, Shen Lan continued caring for her girlfriend and the girlfriend’s grandmother, turning the villa into a material remnant of a life that had been planned but not completed.

Gu Huaian appears to have helped make that home possible. Shen Tang realizes that Shen Lan probably did not yet have the means to accomplish it alone and infers that Gu Huaian must have provided assistance. The inference is strengthened by his precise knowledge of Shen Lan’s circumstances. His support is therefore practical rather than possessive: he does not attempt to restore Shen Lan to her family or dictate whom she should love, but he helps sustain the domestic life she chose after breaking with her relatives.

Protection, Suspicion, and Shen Tang

Gu Huaian’s concern about Shen Lan changes once Shen Tang enters the situation. He advises Shen Tang to keep her distance from Shen Lan, but the warning is not based on Shen Lan’s sexual orientation alone. Gu Huaian explains that, after her trauma, Shen Lan began sleeping around to numb her pain. She seduced several people, accepted no responsibility for the emotional consequences, and left after attracting them; some of those women became so attached that they wanted to live and die for her.

The warning creates a triangular tension among the three characters. Gu Huaian fears that Shen Lan may seduce Shen Tang away from him, and his silence when Shen Tang directly raises that possibility effectively confirms the suspicion. His anxiety is especially revealing because it combines knowledge, protectiveness, and jealousy: he understands Shen Lan’s destructive coping pattern, yet he also recognizes that Shen Tang might be vulnerable to her appeal. Shen Tang responds with amusement and assures him that she will not be taken away, turning Gu Huaian’s protective warning into a moment of teasing intimacy between the couple.

Shen Lan’s Place in the Wider Story

The relationship between Gu Huaian and Shen Lan illuminates the novel’s broader argument about family and attachment. Shen Lan has rejected her biological family and built her emotional world around a girlfriend, an elderly relative connected to that relationship, and the home they once envisioned together. Gu Huaian, meanwhile, functions as a friend who assists from outside that household while retaining enough closeness to know its history. Their bond therefore sits between blood relation, romantic partnership, and chosen family.

The connection also helps position Shen Tang within that network. Gu Huaian brings her into Shen Lan’s sphere despite his own reservations, and Shen Lan later invites Shen Tang to meet her girlfriend. What begins as Gu Huaian’s attempt to manage a perceived threat thus opens a path toward greater knowledge of Shen Lan’s chosen domestic life. The relationship’s significance lies less in a final resolution than in the way it exposes the boundaries Gu Huaian tries to protect and the alternative forms of family that Shen Lan has created beyond the Shen surname.