Liu Lian arranges Wu Dawang’s departure before the Commander returns

Liu Lian arranges Wu Dawang’s departure before the Division Commander returns by securing him leave and ensuring he can leave without drawing attention to their affair. The plan protects their secrecy, but its timing makes the departure a forced reckoning with their relationship: after eight weeks together, their separation is imminent, and Wu Dawang’s last memory of Liu Lian will be her wave from beneath the vine trellis as his vehicle pulls away.

The return that makes departure necessary

The immediate cause is the news that the Division Commander is coming back earlier than expected. Liu Lian tells Wu Dawang that they have only a few hours left together and offers to spend that remaining time serving him, asking him to remember her. Her announcement changes the meaning of the time they have shared: the affair, which had continued in the Commander’s absence, must now give way to his return.

Wu Dawang asks whether the Commander has called. The question brings into focus how deliberately he has avoided wondering what Liu Lian told her husband when the telephone rang during the previous eight weeks. He had relied on the military rule against asking or listening to what he should not, a habit that spared him anxiety while the affair continued. With the return only hours away, that practiced avoidance can no longer shield him from the situation.

He tells Liu Lian he wants to go home before the Commander returns. She first reassures him that she will settle matters so that it will be as if nothing had happened, then revises her offer: perhaps he should leave for a time and visit his family, with her arranging furlough until his company recalls him. The change from reassurance to a plan of absence makes the concealment concrete. Wu Dawang will not be at the household when the Commander comes back.

Furlough and the arranged journey

Liu Lian’s plan extends beyond the decision to leave. Wu Dawang’s escape proceeds according to her arrangements: at ten in the morning on his departure day, an official who handled long-distance berths for senior officers meets him at the railway station. The official gives him a scarce standard-berth ticket and a special military travel permit, which Wu Dawang is instructed to keep with him. The formal travel documents make the departure possible, while the arrangement itself keeps him moving away from the household without a public farewell there.

For appearances, Liu Lian does not accompany him to the station and does not walk as far as the gate of Compound Number One. A jeep sent by Management is waiting to take Wu Dawang away. As it sounds its horn, she puts twenty crisp ten-yuan notes into his hand and tells him to buy decent clothes for his wife and toys and treats for his son. He resists, but she insists and puts the money into the leather briefcase she has found for his travel documents. The gift ties their parting to the family life he is returning to, even as the journey marks the end of their time together.

The farewell is brief because the jeep keeps sounding its horn. Wu Dawang asks whether he will ever see Liu Lian again. After letting him hold her hand for a minute, she withdraws it and tells him to go because the driver is waiting. Though he had hoped she would see him all the way to the vehicle, he tells her not to, and she does not. Once he is driving away, however, she comes out of the house, stops beneath the vine trellis, and waves with a sad, brave smile.

Separation and what follows

Wu Dawang does not know that this last smile will dominate his memories of Liu Lian for the rest of his life. During his six weeks of leave in the Balou Mountains, it becomes his principal consolation. The plan therefore accomplishes its immediate purpose—getting him away before the Commander returns—but leaves him alone with the separation and with no knowledge of what happens at the household after his departure.

His leave also removes him from the unfolding consequences of the affair. While he is away, the Division is being prepared to disappear from the military system under an authorized restructuring, and its leaders are working to erase the Catering Squad Sergeant and his personal history from view. Wu Dawang does not yet understand the scale of the demobilization or how his liaison with Liu Lian will affect the destinies of his comrades. The private arrangement that takes him home thus intersects with an institutional upheaval whose full meaning is hidden from him at the point of departure.

The private plan within a larger system

The episode develops a pattern already shaping Wu Dawang’s prospects: personal access and official procedure operate together. Earlier, the Political Instructor had accused Wu Dawang of failing to understand the claim that service to the Division Commander and his wife counted as service to the People, then gave him one more day at the household to put matters right. Liu Lian’s later arrangements make that private influence operational, converting her position into a furlough, travel arrangements, and a controlled exit. What begins as an intimate relationship is consequently entangled with the army’s decisions about personnel and privilege.

Wu Dawang’s earlier marriage pledge adds another pressure to the departure. He had promised Zhao Ezi’s father that he would earn commendations, join the Party, and become an official, with the aim of moving Zhao Ezi and their family to a city. After failing at first to secure recognition, he rose through the Catering Squad, became a full Sergeant, joined the Party, and received awards, though promotion to officialdom remained elusive. Liu Lian had told him she would help arrange for his family to join him when promotions resumed. The prospect of a city job and a future for his family therefore accompanies his departure, even as the relationship that helped make those prospects imaginable is being cut short.

The ending holds two futures in tension. In the immediate scene, Liu Lian’s discretion and planning allow Wu Dawang to leave before the Commander’s return, and her final wave becomes his lasting private image of her. Beyond it, the military reorganization is already changing what departure will mean: the furlough is not simply a temporary break from the household, but the threshold of Wu Dawang’s removal from the division and the unravelling of the career on which his earlier promises depended.