Li Yan and Li Yifu's uncle-nephew relationship

Li Yan and Li Yifu's uncle-nephew relationship is defined in the novel by the difference between knowing Yifu through public encounters and knowing him through ten years of shared life. When a senior official uses Yifu’s character to admonish Li, Li refuses to let an outsider’s account settle who his uncle was. His defense is personal, but it also becomes an act of resistance within the investigation: Yifu’s remembered words help Li stand his ground when his own conduct and judgment are under scrutiny.

The Measure of a Decade

The clearest measure of the relationship is Li’s insistence that he lived with Yifu for ten years. That duration gives weight to his reply to the Commissioner, who says he met Yifu on several occasions and describes him as unusual. The Commissioner’s encounters provide one kind of knowledge; Li’s years with his uncle provide another. Li does not claim that a long relationship makes him infallible, but he rejects the idea that brief acquaintance should outweigh sustained proximity. His answer turns a biographical fact into the basis of his right to speak: he believes he knows what sort of man Yifu was because his knowledge comes from life alongside him, not reputation alone.

The distinction matters because the Commissioner’s account begins as praise. He attributes to Yifu “great intelligence and great humility,” then measures Li against that example, telling him that he has not inherited his uncle’s humility. The comparison makes Yifu more than an absent relative: his character becomes a standard used to judge Li. But the standard is being applied by someone who knew Yifu only intermittently, and Li challenges the authority behind that judgment. Their relationship thus appears through an argument over who may define Yifu, and on what grounds.

Yifu as a Public Example

The exchange takes place in an official reprimand. Li is standing before the Commissioner, with the Procurator General present, after being accused of abusing Section Chief Huang and threatening to resign from the investigation. The Commissioner also raises Li’s decision to approach Cui Feng despite Section Chief Huang’s advice. In that setting, invoking Yifu’s humility is not simply an affectionate recollection: it is part of a wider effort to assess Li’s conduct and remind him of the restraint expected from him.

The Commissioner’s praise of Yifu carries a tension that sharpens Li’s response. After criticizing Li for failing to inherit humility, the Commissioner later credits him with inheriting Yifu’s “native cunning.” Li reads the latter description as a more revealing view of the Commissioner’s attitude toward Yifu’s humble origins. The contrast between virtues that sound complimentary and language that carries condescension leaves the praise unsettled. Yifu is being recalled as an admired man, but the terms of that admiration also expose the social judgment embedded in the official’s speech.

A Saying Carried Forward

Li answers the rebuke by recalling one of Yifu’s sayings: “the cock who hides his feathers will not win the hen.” He uses it to make a point about concealment and self-presentation, then turns directly to the Commissioner’s repeated reliance on having met his uncle. The proverb is not offered as a general account of Yifu’s life; it is a specific piece of remembered speech that Li brings into a confrontation. In the moment, it serves as both evidence of an intimate inheritance and a rhetorical answer to the demand that Li display humility.

The saying also shows that the relationship is present in the novel through what Li carries into action. Yifu is not in the room, but his words shape how Li speaks when the pressure to submit is acute. Li knows he has overstepped, yet remains determined to stand his ground. The memory of his uncle does not make the encounter easy or remove its consequences; it gives Li a language with which to defend his position.

Memory, Loyalty, and Judgment

Li’s insistence that he knows Yifu is a defense of both the uncle and the relationship between them. When he says, “I lived with him for ten years. I think I know what my uncle was,” he resists being told who Yifu was by people whose claim rests on occasional meetings. The line asserts a personal bond without supplying a complete portrait of Yifu: the reader learns about the intimacy through Li’s confidence in his own knowledge, rather than through an extended account of their years together.

The confrontation also makes that confidence costly. The Commissioner’s rebuke leaves Li aware that he has crossed a boundary, and the Commissioner’s condescending smile offers a way to preserve face without conceding Li’s argument. Li does not withdraw his claim. The relationship therefore functions less as a comforting reminiscence than as a source of moral and rhetorical steadiness under institutional pressure. Yifu’s remembered humility is invoked to discipline Li, but Li’s deeper knowledge of his uncle allows him to contest that lesson and retain his own judgment.