Pan Jinlian is the wife of Wu Dalang in Water Margin and stands at the center of the domestic tragedy that sends Wu Song toward exile and the outlaw world. Beautiful and dissatisfied with her marriage, she is first seen keeping house above Wu Dalang’s cooked-cake stall. When Wu Song returns from killing the tiger, her husband’s celebrated younger brother enters the same household.
Pan Jinlian repeatedly tests Wu Song’s restraint and finally tries to seduce him, but he rejects her and warns her to honor his brother. After Wu Song leaves on official business, she accidentally drops a curtain pole near Ximen Qing. Wang Po brings the two together and arranges their secret meetings. When Wu Dalang learns of the affair, Ximen Qing kicks him in the chest and leaves him injured in bed.
Fearing exposure when Wu Song returns, Pan Jinlian follows Wang Po’s plan and gives her husband arsenic medicine, then helps conceal the death. Wu Song notices the hasty burial, obtains evidence from He Jiu and Yun’ge, and forces a public account before Wu Dalang’s spirit tablet. He kills Pan Jinlian, then kills Ximen Qing at Lion Tower and surrenders. Although the episode includes no battlefield combat, its chain of seduction, adultery, murder, and revenge drives the domestic tragedy to its end.
