Affair between Wu Dawang and Liu Lian

The Affair between Wu Dawang and Liu Lian is both a clandestine attachment and a channel through which personal influence reshapes Wu Dawang’s military and civilian prospects. Its course runs alongside his long effort to fulfil a marriage pledge, the Division Commander’s decision to volunteer his division for restructuring, and the collective demobilization that separates the lovers. When Wu Dawang returns to Liu Lian’s household before leaving the army, her pregnancy makes the relationship’s private consequences visible; fifteen years later, he visits her once more and departs without reopening it.

A Pledge and a Career Path

Wu Dawang’s relationship with Liu Lian begins against the demands of a promise made before his marriage to Zhao Ezi. In the written pledge, he swears to earn commendations within a year, join the Party within two, and become an official within three, so that he can move Zhao Ezi from Wujiagou to a city home. If he failed, he promised never to show his face in the village again unless she allowed him to return in her service. The marriage followed almost at once, but the career milestones did not. Wu Dawang laboured without earning a commendation or Party membership, while anxious letters from his wife and father-in-law sharpened his fear of failing them.

A vacant catering position eventually changed his prospects. Wu Dawang became Deputy Sergeant of the Catering Squad and took responsibility for the company’s food and water. Over the next year and a half he rose to Sergeant, joined the Party, and received commendations with help from the Political Instructor. Promotion to officialdom remained elusive. His transfer to the Division Commander’s household seemed to bring that last goal closer, but his new position also placed him in Liu Lian’s orbit. The affair therefore develops at a point when his future appears newly promising, while the marriage pledge still defines the practical stakes of his success.

Private Attachment and Public Consequences

Liu Lian’s influence reaches beyond their private relationship. She tells Wu Dawang that promotions are suspended, but that she will arrange for his family to join him when opportunities resume. Her offer places her in the role of benefactor as well as lover: the prospect of a city life for Zhao Ezi and the family is now connected to the Commander’s household and to Liu Lian’s ability to intervene. At the same time, the arrangement makes Wu Dawang’s personal attachment inseparable from professional advantage.

The institutional change that makes this connection consequential is the Division Commander’s decision to volunteer his division for a pilot scheme to streamline and restructure the army. At a seminar in Beijing organized by the Central Military Commission, he accepted an assignment no other division had been willing to undertake. In practice, the division was to be disbanded. Promotions were cancelled as most companies faced demobilization and others transfer, but the Commander left instructions that an exception be made for Wu Dawang: he was to receive a job in a city in his home province, and his family was to be moved there, with work found for his wife. The promised outcome thus arrived not as the promotion Wu Dawang had pursued, but as a favourable civilian settlement amid the division’s disappearance.

The household’s instability also made a return to Liu Lian difficult. As personnel changed during the restructuring, successive orderlies provoked the Commander’s anger, despite their discretion and Liu Lian’s efforts to smooth matters over. Wu Dawang was told not to return to his old post or visit the house except on pressing business. When he learned of the arrangements, he felt relief that the affair had not been discovered. He initially interpreted his good fortune simply: within a week, he and his family had jobs and housing in the city nearest their village, while comrades faced uncertainty. He needed only to complete and sign bureaucratic forms.

Suspicion Amid Disbandment

The approaching end of Wu Dawang’s army career gives him time to reconsider the relationship. As he wanders around the barracks, sees comrades from his village, and prepares for departure, he begins to suspect that the affair has been an elaborately choreographed scheme. He imagines himself cast in a role whose emotional meaning was the only part he could freely choose. His suspicion grows as he connects Liu Lian’s favour with the dismantling of the division, yet he resists concluding that the Division Commander exploited the restructuring for personal ends. Even the transfer of three battalions and four companies to a remote frontier division does not immediately dislodge his romantic account of what happened.

The departure of the troops gives that conflict a collective setting. Wu Dawang sees soldiers sit silently through farewell banquets, then vent their anger by breaking windows and smashing equipment before leaving. Some weep openly, accepting that they may never meet again. At the deserted barracks, however, he realizes that his own pain is not chiefly for the comrades being sent away or the homes to which they are returning. It comes from the warning that he must not go back to the Division Commander’s house. The distinction exposes how far his concerns have narrowed around Liu Lian, even as the institution that brought them together breaks apart.

A comment from the Head of Management sharpens his doubts. After Wu Dawang signs a job-assignment form, the official says that, thanks to Liu Lian, he has come out better than anyone else. Wu Dawang is left weighing the remark and its ambiguous smile. At night, memories of his time with Liu Lian overwhelm his suspicion: his longing eclipses the imminent return to civilian life, his family’s transfer, and even the division’s traumatic dissolution. He puts on his uniform and tries to go to her once more, but is stopped before leaving the barracks.

The Last Visit

On the night before his departure, Wu Dawang accompanies the Political Instructor to Liu Lian’s house. The Instructor has asked Wu Dawang to seek her help in persuading the Division Commander to retain him in the army. He explains that he has been told he will be demobilized, although he has served without a mistake and hopes to stay another year or two. His own marriage resembles Wu Dawang’s: his father-in-law had agreed to the match because he expected military service to lead to a city job for his daughter, and the Instructor had written a guarantee to secure that prospect. Wu Dawang is struck by the similarity between their pledges.

Liu Lian opens the door in a red knitted nightgown. Wu Dawang notices that she looks exhausted and that her stomach protrudes distinctly: she is pregnant. He says he is leaving, and she already knows he will take the 12:30 train. He tells her that he wanted to see her once more and offers a packet of pine kernels brought from home. She accepts it, examines it, tries one, and goes upstairs without speaking. The small gift marks the visit as a farewell rather than a resumption of the relationship.

When Liu Lian returns, she asks whether the Political Instructor had sent Wu Dawang to request her intervention. He confirms that he had. Liu Lian says she cannot help: the authorities have approved the Commander’s final report, and all troops still in barracks are to be sent home. She adds that everyone has suffered because of her and promises to help the Instructor and the Captain after they leave the army. Wu Dawang does not move. She guides his hand to her swelling stomach, then urges him to go before the Commander returns. Her gesture links the private affair to a consequence he can no longer mistake, while her words close off the last hope of changing the demobilization.

As Liu Lian walks them to the gate, Wu Dawang notices the scent of sweet, ripe apple on her. Three days later, the division’s final demobilization is officially announced. Those who knew of the affair and those who did not are scattered, and the secret sinks without trace. The relationship has produced help for Wu Dawang’s transition to civilian life, but it leaves no public record and cannot preserve the shared world in which it took place.

Fifteen Years Later

Fifteen years after leaving the army, Wu Dawang returns to the gate of the Commander’s compound in the provincial capital. A message from Liu Lian offers help if he needs money, asking him to state the amount and address. Wu Dawang stares reproachfully at the front door, folds the letter, and gives the sentry a stiff rectangular object wrapped in red silk, asking that it be delivered to Liu Lian. He then walks away into the snow. The contents of the object are not identified in the account, and the visit ends without a conversation between them.

The episode’s final image preserves the affair as an unresolved attachment rather than a recovered romance. During the division’s dissolution, Wu Dawang had mistaken personal favour for uncomplicated good fortune and then feared that his feelings had been staged for him. Liu Lian’s pregnancy, the lost opportunity to intervene for the Political Instructor, and the secret’s disappearance establish the relationship’s costs and limits. The later visit offers a final gesture, but Wu Dawang leaves without asking for anything; the affair remains a private history carried beyond the institution that enabled it, then left at the gate.