Wu Dawang returns to the division after his furlough

Wu Dawang’s return to the Division after furlough is the point at which an uncertain homecoming becomes an abrupt reckoning with the Division’s dissolution and his own departure. He expects to resume his place in barracks and remains preoccupied with Liu Lian, but the Political Instructor’s briefing reveals that the Division is being disbanded, Wu has been granted extended leave, and his family’s move to the city has been arranged. The return offers him relief and security while keeping him excluded from the household and leaving him increasingly suspicious that his affair and his good fortune are entangled with the Division’s dismantling.

Return to Barracks

After the father of Zhao Ezi repudiates his prenuptial pledge, Wu packs his luggage and sets out for the Division. He travels for two days and one night by train, bus, and tractor, his anticipation mounting as he nears barracks. At the main gate, the sentry recognizes from the bags that he has returned from home leave, though the two do not know each other personally. Wu explains that the luggage has kept him from returning the salute. The sentry’s response—that Wu need not have come back because the company could have forwarded his belongings—leaves him bewildered. When the sentry adds that ignorance is bliss, Wu realizes that news has reached the barracks before him, but not what has happened.

His first approach to the company barracks makes the change visible before it is explained. A truck passes, crowded with uniformed soldiers and their packs, beneath a red banner bearing the slogan “Wherever I Wander is My Home.” As it accelerates past the office, two bottles of liquor are thrown against the brick gable; the Signals Officer comes out to sweep up the glass. When Wu calls to him, the officer returns inside without answering. The scene gives Wu no clear account of events, only fragments of a departure already under way and a silence that deepens his confusion.

The Political Instructor’s Briefing

The Political Instructor meets Wu at the doorway and reminds him that he was supposed to wait at home until recalled. Rather than reprimand him further, the Instructor ushers him inside, offers hot water, lets him wash with scented soap, and arranges a bowl of egg noodles after learning he has not eaten. The unusual hospitality steadies Wu before the news arrives. The contrast between the care he receives and the disorder outside frames the briefing as both an act of personal consideration and an explanation of an institutional upheaval.

First, the Instructor says that the Division Commander’s wife has reported serious family problems and requested three months of home leave for Wu. The leave has been granted, and Wu may remain away unless urgent business requires his return. The account makes clear that Wu’s absence has not been treated as an ordinary furlough: Liu Lian has intervened on his behalf, and the arrangement is tied to her account of his circumstances.

The larger news is that, at a seminar in Beijing organized and directed by the Central Military Commission, the Division Commander volunteered the Division for a pilot scheme to streamline and restructure the army. The practical consequence is the Division’s disbandment. The Instructor describes the unit as disappearing within the vast organization of the People’s Liberation Army, making Wu’s return an arrival at an institution already facing dissolution rather than a simple resumption of service.

The reorganization has also frozen promotions. For Wu, that seems to close off the official position he has long sought. Yet the Division Commander has ordered an exception: Wu is to receive a job in a city in his native province, his family is to move there, and suitable work is to be found for his wife. This outcome recalls the terms of Wu’s marriage bargain with Zhao Ezi. His written pledge had tied commendations, Party membership, promotion, and a city home to strict deadlines; although he attained rank, Party membership, and awards, officialdom remained beyond his reach. Now the city move appears secured not by promotion but by the Commander’s personal intervention.

Exclusion from the Household

The Instructor also explains why Wu must not resume his former post. The Division Commander’s household has seen a high turnover of orderlies during the restructuring. Although the successive attendants tried to be discreet and Liu Lian tried to smooth matters over, each had somehow incurred the Commander’s anger. Given the uncertainty of the Commander’s temper, Wu is told not to return to his old duties or even visit Compound Number One unless an urgent matter requires it.

This restriction gives Wu’s return an intimate as well as institutional consequence. He had come back with his thoughts fixed on seeing Liu Lian and on the advantages he expected his connection to her to bring. The order keeps him away from her just as the Division is breaking up and he is being prepared for civilian life. When the Instructor’s account sinks in, Wu feels enormous relief: his affair with Liu Lian has not been discovered. But that relief does not restore his former position. He has an urban future arranged for him while the relationship that helped secure his favor is now inaccessible.

A Favorable Outcome Under Suspicion

At first Wu takes his circumstances at face value. The Instructor’s account seems to promise a smooth transition: within a week, Wu and his family have work and housing in the city nearest their village, and he needs only to complete and sign the forms provided by army bureaucrats. While his comrades face uncertainty about their own prospects, Wu sees his future settled with striking speed. His military career closes almost before he has absorbed the scale of the restructuring.

The contrast between his good fortune and the other soldiers’ unsettled futures gradually troubles him. During his last days, he wanders through barracks, visits fellow soldiers from his village, and washes his bedding and clothes. The ordinary tasks give him time to consider whether his affair with Liu Lian was part of a scheme arranged behind the scenes. He begins to suspect that he had been cast in a role, with emotional involvement the one part of the performance left to his choice. Yet he cannot bring himself to replace his romantic memories with a clear-eyed account of how the affair might relate to the Division’s dismantling.

That suspicion grows when the Head of Management asks Wu to sign a job-assignment form. Afterward, he tells Wu that, thanks to Liu Lian, Wu has come out better than anyone else. The remark and the official form bring private influence and bureaucratic procedure together without explaining exactly how they have operated. Wu is left to ponder the implication. The episode closes not with an answer but with a divided state of mind: he has a secure civilian destination, is barred from visiting Liu Lian, and remains unable either to dismiss his suspicions or to surrender the memories that sustain his longing.