秋瑾
Old Chuan and his wife, the proprietors of a small tea shop, save their money to buy a folk medicine cure for their son, Young Chuan, who is dying of tuberculosis. The story opens with Old Chuan leaving their shop and going to the home of the person selling the cure, a "roll of steamed bread, from which crimson drops were dripping to the ground." The crimson drops, we soon learn, are blood from a young man, Xia Yu (夏瑜), who was recently executed apparently for revolutionary activities. Xia Yu's name, his surname the name of a season and his given name a character with the jade radical, is often seen as an allusion to the name of Qiu Jin (秋瑾), a friend of Lu Xun who was beheaded for revolutionary activity.