4 ideas
The novel's central image is that marriage is like a besieged fortress: those outside want to storm in, and those inside want to break out. The desire comes from being on the outside, not from the thing itself. Once you get in, the same restlessness points you back toward the exit, so gaining the goal changes where you stand without ending the wanting.
Fang Hongjian drifts through four years at European universities without earning anything. He returns to 1937 Shanghai, where the fake credential is enough to get him feted as a returned scholar and later hired by a provincial university. His private shame over the fraud leaves him unable to defend himself against colleagues who are just as hollow.
When a society ranks people by foreign diplomas and titles rather than by what they can actually do, credentials become currency. People can buy, fake, or inflate them, and everyone quietly agrees not to check. At San Lü University, faculty rank depends on degree labels, so impostors, plagiarists, and schemers do well, while real ability gives no protection against intrigue.
Fang's life is shaped less by his choices than by his refusals to choose. He lets Miss Su think he loves her, drifts away from Tang Xiaofu instead of pursuing her, and slides into marriage with Sun Roujia because she decides for him. Seen this way, indecision is itself a decision: it hands your life to whoever is most willing to act, and the outcome is a string of defaults you never picked.