A Many-Splendoured Thing is a novel by Han Suyin that was a bestseller upon publication in London in 1952 by Jonathan Cape.

In her 1980 autobiographical work, My House Has Two Doors, Suyin evinced no interest in watching the film even in Singapore, where it ran for several months.

Her motive in selling the film rights was to pay for an operation in England for her adopted daughter who had pulmonary tuberculosis.

[citation needed] The story portrays a married British foreign correspondent named Mark Elliot (Ian Morrison in real life, living in Singapore with his wife and children), who falls in love with a Eurasian doctor originally from Mainland China who trained at the London Royal Free Hospital Medical College in London University, only to encounter prejudice from her family and from Hong Kong society.

On the surface it is a love story but it has historical perspective relating to China, Hong Kong, and the peoples and societies that populated the island.