Dionne R. Donadelle
on Han Suyin's A Many Splendored Thing
 

A Many-Splendored Thing by Han Suyin is a autobiographical account of her love affair with Mark Elliot a war correspondent from England who thought that love was no where to be found (not receiving any satisfaction from his marriage), and herself an Eurasian doctor/writer/mother and widow who by tradition in China cannot remarry and wants to focus on giving back to China by practicing medicine to make ends meet for herself and her daughter and fighting in the struggle. On the surface this seems like not much of a obstacle to undertake in becoming a couple, but with China’s belief in sticking with your own kind, and the ongoing civil war it puts this love to the ultimate test. Taking place in Hong Kong and China from 1949 to August of 1950 it is in the middle of the war between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists, a civil war that is leading to many revolutionary changes.

Han Suyin has written many books, most based on her life growing up as a Eurasian in China, observing the revolution from the Hong Kong border and then eventually returning to China. She started to write about the aspirations of her people, their high ideals and hopes, along with the pain, of the Cultural Revolution. Having two cultural identities of her own, she devoted her literary career to exploring the two. Her mother was Belgian and her father Chinese, her real name is Chou Kuang Hu, which she says sticks in the throat like a fishbone. She took Han Suyin while writing her first book, "Destination Chungking." Suyin says her name stands for a little voice that never stops talking. Suyin in an interview states that she is a person who changes, who adapts; "It’s because of my avidity for learning. If tomorrow you prove to me something new, I’ll be quite willing to overturn my ideas because ideas are made to be overturned."

She has been faced with many obstacles; her mother who taunted her as a yellowish object and tried to prevent her from getting an education. She feels that there comes a time that with maturity you’re quite pleased that somebody was a bitch to you. Her first husband also abused her because she wanted to practice medicine, so his death wasn’t one that was missed. She states that "everything changes, including the stars, I really can’t hate more than five or 10 years. Wouldn’t it be terrible to be always burdened with those primary emotions you had at one time?"

With this I state why the book as a whole encourages the bringing of old tradition with new innovation together, this would be the only way in order for civilization to be established anywhere but specifically in China and Hong Kong. She writes deeply about the problems that exist in Asia as well as the love she shares for Mark Elliot. She describes every account of her life at this time like a vivid photograph that has the power to but you right there in the midst of the action.

This book though a love story, it engulfs all the background that takes place in life while a love affair is taking place. This is what makes the book a great read, it brings the world to the table with the full course meal must a dessert. So the bad comes with the good. After Mark and Han became an item it seem as though nothing could go wrong. With all the struggles political and economical their love strived on the beauty of being together living just for today. An essay by Dionne Donadelle.

These two belonged together like peanut butter and jelly does. They were attracted physically, mentally by their thoughts of the struggle and wanting it to end it, as well as emotionally by looking for love and appreciation for just the outside as well as the inside. Their union was like that of Sakuntala and the King. The desire to be together would seem to be a destiny never to be denied, but the duty, dharma couldn’t allow it. It couldn’t last forever.

While Mark was away in Korea doing is duty as a war correspondent. The worst that could happened did, he died. What makes the death an acceptable one is that the way he died is the way he wanted to: "Feeling young, invulnerable, and that life had been worth living, wrapped in a splendid love," stated by a good friend Francois in the book. Taken from the conclusion of the book from the thoughts of Han Suyin she states. In my empty enchanted hands I hold fabulous treasure; the immense nothingness of heaven, the vacancy of space, and time’s fleet magic. Look how it has transformed me. For I am now crowned with negation, mantled with absence, throned on nothingness, empress of exceeding glory, the splendor and wealth of love and death. I sit and dream, as if… As if my dream were reality. For now, like Mark, I do not know what is reality and what is dream. And if it is a dream, then I have dreamed a wonderful dream to shield me from the night, and the breath of heaven itself cannot blow my dream away. I have dreamed a wonderful dream; of life, and love and death, of laughter, and tears, and good and ill, and all these things which are equal under Heaven, which equalizes all things. A wonderful dream, my many-splendored thing.

This statement gives you an insight I feel as to how deep this love that existed between these two individuals were. What else can I say; Love it is a many-splendored thing. I could only wish this type of love for anyone that I do care about. It seems that it is only meant to be a fairytale, a dream, and an impossible dream. But like all dreams though they can come through, they must end. What’s ironic or even worthy is to live your life, as a dream but a realistic dream not an idealistic one.