Gathering and Parting, Ever Lingering

Gathering and Parting, Ever Lingering is a full-length romance novel written by Qiong Yao in 1979, set in late-1970s Taipei. The heroine, He Panyun, is widowed during her honeymoon when her husband Zhong Wenqiao dies in a car accident; thereafter she remains a widow in the Zhong family, sealing her heart in a sweet memory that cannot be returned to. By chance, outside a pet shop she meets a young singer, Gao Han, over a little dog named Nini; later Gao Han appears before her again because of his association with the Zhong family niece Zhong Kehui, and in the ensemble of piano and guitar the song Gathering and Parting, Ever Lingering ignites the feelings they cannot speak. The problem is this: Gao Han had been taken by Kehui as her suitor, and Kehui loves him with all her heart; while Panyun, struggling between morality, human feeling, and conscience, chooses to yield. Misunderstandings, unrequited love, accidents, and two years of separation push the two who love each other further and further apart. Why is the timing of their meeting always wrong? When they do fall in love, they cannot truly possess each other; before "gathering" can even be spoken of, they must speak of "parting." Gathering, ever lingering; parting, ever lingering—when can Panyun and Gao Han truly lean on each other? With delicate strokes, the novel writes out the difficult emotional entanglement between love and duty, and is one of the representative works of Qiong Yao's mature period; it was adapted into a film of the same name in 1981.