The Division Commander’s Family Compound (Former Division Headquarters) is both a military household and the central domestic setting of Wu Dawang’s story: the place where his orderly duties become entangled with his hopes for advancement and his relationship with Liu Lian. Its public routines conceal a private transformation, but the compound remains subject to the army’s chain of command and, ultimately, to the Division’s disbandment.

Setting and Function

The compound houses the Division Commander and his family in a group of six residences. Its space is organized by both domestic work and military status: Wu Dawang tends the gardens, prepares meals, and serves in the household, while Liu Lian occupies the position of the Commander’s wife. The compound’s bright residences contrast with the dark barracks, marking its distinctive place within the military world.

For Wu Dawang, the household is also a consequential posting. After becoming Deputy Sergeant of the Catering Squad, he advances to full Sergeant, joins the Party, and receives commendations; his appointment to the Commander’s household raises his prospects of securing the official promotion he still lacks. The compound therefore represents an opportunity shaped by service to people with institutional power, rather than a space separate from his military career.

Domestic Routine and Private Signals

Meals, gardening, and household chores establish the ordinary rhythm of the compound. Liu Lian turns the Serve the People! sign into a private signal: when it is moved from its usual place to the dining table, Wu Dawang is to come upstairs. She explains the arrangement directly, and later repeats the instruction. A political emblem thereby acquires a second, intimate use inside a household where public revolutionary language and private desire coexist.

As the affair develops, the sign appears in different places around the house and garden, allowing Liu Lian to summon Wu Dawang without an explicit exchange. Their established work continues in view of passersby: he still tends the garden, maintaining the appearance that the Commander’s wife and her orderly remain in their usual roles. In private, however, the routines change. Liu Lian sometimes calls him in while she cooks, and the domestic spaces become settings for a relationship hidden behind the orderly’s familiar duties.

The compound’s hierarchy remains legible even within their private life. When Wu Dawang speaks as if Liu Lian should perform a domestic service for him, she points to the sign rather than accepting the assumption. Its message recalls the role he has been assigned in the household and the lower status he cannot simply discard. Their private arrangement may loosen ordinary boundaries, but it does not erase the hierarchy that structures his employment there.

Authority, Secrecy, and the Affair

The affair is enabled not only by the house’s privacy but by military decisions beyond it. Liu Lian tells Wu Dawang’s company superiors that she is uneasy staying alone at night and requests that he sleep at the compound. They agree, treating the quality of his service as a matter that reflects on the company. The arrangement gives him a legitimate reason to remain in the house and helps create the conditions in which the secret relationship can continue.

The Political Instructor later confronts Wu Dawang after Liu Lian complains about his service and asks for him to be replaced. He rebukes Wu Dawang for failing to serve the Commander’s wife properly, invokes the effect on the Commander’s work and the Division’s readiness, and stresses how Wu Dawang’s posting might help his ambitions. Although Wu Dawang is angry with Liu Lian, he withholds the nature of her advances. The Instructor then gives him one more day at the house to put matters right, illustrating how a superior’s personal discretion affects access to the compound as well as Wu Dawang’s prospects.

Departure and Significance

The compound’s role changes when the Division Commander volunteers his unit for a pilot restructuring scheme at a Beijing seminar organized by the Central Military Commission. The plan means the Division will be disbanded. Amid the resulting personnel turnover, the Commander’s household has seen several orderlies; the Political Instructor tells Wu Dawang not to return to his former post or visit the house except for pressing business. Wu Dawang is also granted extended home leave and an arrangement for work and housing in a city in his native province, but the new assignment separates him from the household where his affair has taken place.

On the night before Wu Dawang’s departure, the Political Instructor brings him to the compound. The six residences are lit while the barracks are dark, and the familiar vine trellis remains visible at the entrance. Liu Lian appears in a red knitted nightgown, looking tired and visibly pregnant. Their encounter at the threshold is awkward and brief; Wu Dawang gives her pine kernels brought from home, and she accepts the gift. Inside, the sitting room has been restored with a different framed revolutionary quotation in place of one the couple had broken. He wants to see the kitchen and dining room again, including the sign that had become their private signal, but Liu Lian returns and hands him an object wrapped in red silk.

Liu Lian cannot help the Political Instructor and the Captain by appealing to the Division Commander: the authorities have approved the Commander’s final report, and the troops still in barracks are to be sent home. She tells Wu Dawang to pass on that she will help them after they have left the army, then urges him to go before the Commander returns. The compound thus gathers the story’s central contrasts into one setting: a household of apparent routine and concealed change, a place that offers Wu Dawang advancement but not lasting freedom from hierarchy, and a private refuge whose future is finally overtaken by institutional dissolution.