The Division Commander’s Impotence
Serve the People!The Division Commander’s Impotence is a secret Liu Lian discloses to Wu Dawang, complicating the status and history of her marriage to the Division Commander. The revelation helps explain the distance between rank and private life in the novel: the Commander’s public authority and revolutionary standing coexist with an intimate marriage that Liu describes as painful and constraining. Its significance lies not only in the fact itself, but in how it alters Wu’s understanding of Liu, her marriage, and the choices that have brought the three characters together.
Disclosure and Context
After Liu tells Wu that she wishes he were her husband, he reminds her that she is the Division Commander’s wife and that other women envy her. She answers that the Commander is impotent, a disclosure that leaves Wu staring at her in amazement. Liu then sighs and changes the subject, turning from her sorrow to Wu’s ambition to become an official. The abrupt transition makes the confession both intimate and limited: she reveals what explains part of her marriage, but does not elaborate at that moment.
Liu repeats the fact later during a conversation with Wu about her decision to marry the Commander. When Wu challenges her for marrying him despite his impotence, she warns Wu against saying what he should not. His claim that he is her husband and can speak freely meets a reminder of their actual positions: he is the Commander’s orderly, and she is the Commander’s wife. The exchange shows how the private disclosure sits inside a hierarchy that neither lover can simply talk away.
Marriage, Rank, and Obligation
Liu’s account prevents the disclosure from serving as a simple explanation of why she married the Commander. She says she had willingly agreed to the marriage after reciting Mao Zedong quotations to him; the Commander had first advanced her and then married her. She did not know about his impotence or that his first wife had divorced him for that reason. By the time Liu considered asking for a divorce, the Commander had knelt before her and pleaded.
She describes the Commander’s revolutionary biography as central to her hesitation: he joined the Communists at fourteen to fight the Japanese, had been wounded four times by 1945, and was later shot during the Civil War. She says he still had two bullets in him and a cupboard filled with medals and honors. Faced with a decorated veteran on his knees, she found divorce difficult to contemplate. Her story therefore sets physical incapacity beside a history of sacrifice and public distinction; Liu’s account of obligation, rather than a single explanation, shapes her decision to remain married.
Consequences for Wu and Liu
The disclosure intensifies Wu’s emotional response to Liu without resolving the conflict between desire and position. When Liu describes her willingness to marry the Commander and the reasons she found divorce difficult, Wu reacts with anger at the thought that she had wanted to marry him. Their conversation exposes his possessiveness even as their formal roles remain unchanged: Liu belongs to the Commander’s household, and Wu serves there as an orderly.
That imbalance also frames the larger course of Wu’s ambitions. His premarital pledge to Zhao Ezi ties marriage to advancement, Party membership, official status, and a move to the city. After years of striving, he becomes a sergeant, joins the Party, and receives commendations, while the official’s four-pocket jacket remains out of reach. His transfer to the Division Commander’s household improves his promotion prospects, but Liu’s presence unsettles the prospect he has pursued. The Commander’s impotence is not presented as the cause of Wu’s career or affair; it is one element of the private household’s tensions, set against the institutional rewards on which Wu’s future depends.
The Secret Against Institutional Change
The Commander’s private life persists within a story increasingly governed by military restructuring. At a seminar in Beijing organized by the Central Military Commission, he volunteers his Division for a pilot scheme to streamline and restructure the army. The Division is consequently to be disbanded, and promotions are cancelled. Although Wu’s official appointment again appears to be lost, the Commander arranges a city job for him, along with a move for his family and work for his wife.
The upheaval also alters Wu’s access to the household. Turnover among the Commander’s orderlies has been high; the new staff have provoked the Commander’s anger despite their caution, and Liu has tried to smooth matters over. Because his temper is uncertain, Wu is told not to return to his former post or visit the house without an urgent reason. Wu feels relieved that the affair has not been discovered, but the separation imposed by demobilization and household restrictions brings the romance toward an abrupt close. In that ending, the revelation about the Commander’s impotence remains a private truth within a marriage marked by rank, sacrifice, and obligation, while the institution that has arranged the characters’ lives is itself being dismantled.
