Marriage certificate

The marriage certificate is the decisive material proof of Shen Tang and Gu Huaian’s marriage. Although their union begins as a contract and later becomes emotionally genuine, the certificate remains an objective legal fact when their relationship is difficult to define. It therefore anchors the novel’s central movement from transactional marriage toward a real partnership.

Legal Proof Against Rumor

The certificate first matters because Shen Tang does not treat her marriage as gossip. When Tang Shuqing assumes that her marriage to Gu Huaian is merely a rumor, Shen Tang directly confirms that it is true. Her response separates the legal reality of the marriage from the entertainment industry’s habit of turning private relationships into speculation.

That distinction also explains why the certificate has such force during periods of public uncertainty. Shen Tang is a scandal-prone celebrity whose company repeatedly pairs her with male co-stars for publicity, making her romantic image unstable and commercially manipulated. Against that manufactured circulation of rumors, the certificate supplies a fact that publicity cannot create or erase.

A Marriage That Outlasts Estrangement

The document becomes especially significant when Shen Tang can no longer describe her relationship with Gu Huaian simply as an ongoing romance. She acknowledges that they may not be contacting each other and that she does not know what their current relationship is. Yet she also recognizes that the marriage certificate still exists, while both of them continue to have feelings for each other. The certificate thus preserves a bond during emotional and practical separation without pretending that the relationship is uncomplicated.

This tension gives the object more than bureaucratic importance. Shen Tang’s uncertainty is not caused by the absence of a marital status; it comes from the gap between status and lived intimacy. The certificate says that she and Gu Huaian are married, while their silence makes that marriage feel suspended. Its presence prevents either character from reducing the relationship to a finished contract or an ordinary breakup.

Family, Care, and Practical Consequences

The certificate also sits within a wider reconstruction of family. Shen Tang’s sense of responsibility originally extends beyond biological relatives: she supports a child from the same orphanage after he develops leukemia, and she has spent her savings helping the orphanage’s children. Her marriage therefore enters a life already organized around practical care rather than legal kinship alone. The document gives formal shape to one relationship, while the orphanage demonstrates that family can also be created through sustained responsibility.

The novel repeatedly contrasts legal and bodily vulnerability with the care that relationships require. Shen Tang suffers multiple fractures and shattered hand bones after an accident, while Gu Huaian is hospitalized with gastritis after overeating food she kept serving him. These medical crises expose dependence and guilt in ways that a document cannot resolve by itself. The certificate matters because it establishes a recognized marital connection, but its emotional meaning is produced through acts of protection, worry, forgiveness, and continued attachment.

Symbol of the Relationship’s Change

Shen Tang’s marriage to Gu Huaian begins under a contractual arrangement, yet later evidence confirms that the relationship is not emotionally empty. Shen Tang admits that both of them have feelings for each other, and she eventually says that she will forgive Gu Huaian when he returns. That promise treats the marriage as an unfinished relationship worth preserving, not merely as an agreement awaiting expiration.

The certificate consequently functions as a compact symbol of the story’s repeated challenge to appearances. A scandal celebrity can be publicly linked to countless men without having a real marriage; a couple can be emotionally estranged while still legally married; and a contract can acquire genuine feeling without changing its original form. The document holds these contradictions together. Its significance lies precisely in its refusal to disappear when reputation, communication, and certainty do.