Stephanie Ryder and Jen En Yong

Story Origin:

'Till Morning Comes by Han Suyin (Click here if you want to read my review.)

Story Summary:

Stephanie Ryder, a 21? year old young woman arrived to Chungking for a journalistic assignment and gets into a scuffle with a soldier named Towering Cloud Hsu who harmed a pregnant woman when they try to clear out the slums. When she transported the woman to a hospital, she meets Jen En Yong. (Jen Yong,) a Chinese doctor and its literally love at first sight. Jen secretly trains doctors and with some help sends them over to Yenan?

Stephanie and Jen date a few times before she gets sent to a special city that no one has been in. In there, during an attack, she captures pneumonia and along with others must live in a cave. Very soon, Jen joins her and through difficulties and hardships they get married. Worried about her health, Jen tells her to go back home where she can recuperate and must also deal with her father's ignorance or hatred of her marriage to Jen.

She recovers and goes back to China where she can start life with Jen, as well as teach at a university. Many years later, as Stephanie becomes secretly pregnant and very weary of China's constant revolutions, she goes back to America to recover but is no longer allowed to come back. Her father passes away and she soon takes over his empire, while Jen is left back in China trying to survive.

Years later, shortly before Stephanie comes back, Jen is killed by Towering Cloud Hsu and some gang members. His last thought is of Stephanie on the ranch, being free.

Opinion:

In a way its not a happy ending because the couple don't reunite at the end, but at the same time they married and built a life together for better or worse until death does them apart. The perception will depend on the reader though. That was just a sample of what the book is about. Its a very complex novel filled with multiple characters and how these plots emerged from many incidents.

Romeo and Juliet qualities:

Probably the idea that they were forbidden to be together at first from everyone. An American woman with a Chinese man! I think also the ending, that although Romeo and Juliet have died together, Jen passed away before his last glimpse of Stephanie.

Song: