Zhao Ezi

Zhao Ezi is Wu Dawang’s wife, but their marriage is governed less by emotional closeness than by a bargain about his military advancement and her future in the city. Her father, Accountant Zhao, sees Wu Dawang’s army career as a route to Party membership, commendations, official status, and eventually an urban life for his daughter. The pledge Wu Dawang makes to secure the marriage becomes a lasting measure of his obligations—and of the distance between the couple’s practical arrangement and intimacy.

Marriage and the Promise of a City Life

Accountant Zhao presents the match as an opportunity tied to Wu Dawang’s future in the military. He promises to help Wu Dawang enlist and explains that advancement could eventually bring an urban registration permit for Zhao Ezi, allowing her to leave village life and live in the city with her husband. The arrangement makes her future depend on a sequence of career achievements that Wu Dawang has not yet attained.

When Wu Dawang’s dying mother asks him to marry in the village so that she can know a daughter-in-law will tend her grave, he approaches Accountant Zhao before he has earned commendations or established prospects for promotion. The proposed match is in doubt: Accountant Zhao points to the uncertainty of Wu Dawang’s advancement and asks what sort of life he can offer his daughter. Wu Dawang responds by kneeling and promising to meet the conditions. In a written pledge, he undertakes to win commendations within a year, join the Party within two, become an official within three, and move Zhao Ezi to a city home where she can eat steamed rolls every day. If he fails, he vows never to show his face in Wujiagou again; if she lets him return, he promises to serve her as she chooses.

The marriage follows almost immediately after the pledge is written. Two weeks later, Wu Dawang’s mother dies, having seen him marry. The agreement therefore begins not as a declaration of mutual affection but as a response to family duty and a conditional promise about status, work, and residence. It binds Wu Dawang to a future in which his professional standing is meant to secure Zhao Ezi’s material prospects.

Intimacy as a Test of Advancement

The marriage’s emotional limitations become apparent from the beginning. Wu Dawang recalls that their wedding night initially follows convention, but Zhao Ezi interrupts his attempt at intimacy to ask whether he is a good soldier. She then asks him to repeat his pledge on his knees before she will accept him. He swears that he will work hard and obey the Party, win promotion, and give her a home in the city. Her response is that she believes him. In this early scene, personal closeness is linked directly to proof of his career commitment.

The couple’s later married life remains marked by the same transactional pattern. Wu Dawang cannot explain how their life together became so joyless, and his advances toward Zhao Ezi do not produce the warmth or mutual intimacy he seeks. The account describes their relationship as having been emotionally alienated from the outset, in part because she speaks about unsuitable subjects at unsuitable moments. Their difficulty is not presented as a single rupture but as a pattern that blocks intimacy from developing.

Zhao Ezi is embarrassed by sex and does not make spontaneous declarations of love or ask Wu Dawang to give her physical pleasure. At the same time, she generally allows him to initiate intimacy. Especially after he becomes a Sergeant and joins the Party, she responds to news of his commendations and progress toward official status by smiling and accepting his advances. The narrative frames this pattern as making intimacy a reward for achievements already won and an incentive to continue pursuing the achievements still out of reach.

Separation and the Persistence of the Bargain

Although Zhao Ezi remains Wu Dawang’s wife, the couple spend only two or three months living together during the few years of their marriage. When Wu Dawang returns to village life during the Division’s upheaval, their relationship continues to bear the imprint of his career ambitions. Zhao Ezi has resolved to participate in their marital life, but their closeness remains tied to the promise that he will establish a home for her in the city.

About a month after his return, she notices that he has not touched her and asks whether this is because he has received no new commendations for six months. She tells him he can be intimate with her if he continues working hard when he returns. Her words make plain that she understands his withdrawal through the same terms that have long organized their marriage: recognition and effort at work are linked to the possibility of closeness at home.

The contrast between Zhao Ezi and Liu Lian further clarifies what is missing from the marriage. The narrative distinguishes Zhao Ezi’s understanding of sex as a reward and a necessary release from Liu Lian’s view of it as an exchange of pleasure between equals. The comparison does not erase Zhao Ezi’s role in sustaining the marriage, but it shows how differently intimacy functions in Wu Dawang’s two relationships.

Career Reversals and Narrative Significance

Wu Dawang’s pursuit of the pledge proceeds unevenly. He fails to win a commendation in his first year and is not admitted to the Party the following year. Letters from Zhao Ezi and her father asking about his progress intensify his anxiety. Eventually, however, he becomes Deputy Sergeant of the Catering Squad, then a full Sergeant and a Party member; commendations and awards follow with help from the Political Instructor. Promotion to official status remains out of reach, leaving one major clause of the pledge unfulfilled.

That career path later changes abruptly when the Division Commander volunteers his Division for an army restructuring pilot in Beijing. The plan means the Division will be disbanded, and promotions are cancelled for the time being. Yet the Division Commander orders an exception for Wu Dawang: a city job is to be arranged for him in his home province, his family is to move there, and suitable work is to be found for his wife. Zhao Ezi’s promised urban future thus becomes entangled with a collective reorganization rather than with the promotion Wu Dawang had originally pledged to earn.

Zhao Ezi’s characterization rests on this unresolved conjunction of duty, material hope, and emotional distance. The marriage is established through Wu Dawang’s promise to improve her circumstances, and ordinary intimacy repeatedly echoes that promise. When his military career falters, their relationship registers the strain; when an institutional decision offers a route to the city, the narrative shows how their private future remains dependent on forces larger than either spouse.