The Lament of Autumn

No, it's a sad ending. In the last episode, Yu Changxuan is badly wounded holding the line against the Japanese army, and Mango TV's own title for the episode says he dies for his country. The screen stops at him collapsing, though, so some Chinese viewers still read it as open. A year later, Ye Pingjun is raising their son, who believes his father will come home when the maples turn red. The novel is grim in the opposite way: there, Ye Pingjun dies alone, and Yu Changxuan lives on and remarries.

This account follows Mango TV's own episode titles and synopses for the last seven episodes, plus Baidu Baike through episode 34. We haven't watched them, and the synopses are short, so we only include what they agree on.

The story picks up after Ye Pingjun walks out, pregnant, believing Yu Changxuan had a hand in her mother's death. She loses the baby (episode 34) and opens a flower shop in a small town, where she starts helping her friends Song Hanzhi and Liang Wenbo with their underground patriotic work. Yu Changxuan finds her and, this time, agrees to let her choose. In episode 35, Kuang Bingwen, the family's son-in-law, admits that he set the fire that killed her mother. That clears Yu Changxuan, and the two make up. She goes to the front as a nurse, and she is pregnant again when he leaves for battle.

Then the ship she is on is reported sunk, and he believes she is dead. In fact, Jiang Xueting has her, and he keeps her shut up in his house in another city (episode 36). She has a boy, and Jiang Xueting uses the child to keep her in line. He shows her the newspaper notice of Yu Changxuan's engagement, a political match he agreed to on paper, and has the baby taken away. She is told the child died (episode 37). The boy is alive, and in episode 38 he is brought to Yu Changxuan, who meets his son for the first time. Tao Ziyi's father is killed, and Chinese recaps say she leaves for France.

In episode 39, Jiang Xueting, dying after blowing up a Japanese-run factory, tells Ye Pingjun that her son is alive and gives her a pass out of the city. She makes her way back to Nanhuai. When Japanese planes bomb the city after the Mukden Incident of 1931, she and Yu Changxuan find each other in the streets, and she is reunited with their son. In 1933, as the Japanese army pushes toward the Great Wall, Yu Changxuan overrides his father and takes his troops north to hold the pass at Wubeikou.

The last episode belongs to the war. Before he goes, he promises Ye Pingjun he'll come back so they can plant maples together. His mother, Zhao Baoru, gives herself up to Japanese soldiers to spare the townspeople, shoots an officer, and is killed. At the front, out of ammunition and without reinforcements, Li Boren blows up a tank and dies with it. Yu Changxuan is gravely wounded, remembers their wedding vows, and collapses in the rain. Mango TV titles the episode with his death for his country, though the screen never shows him die. A year later, Ye Pingjun is doing propaganda work in a revolutionary base area. By a stream, she plants a young tree with their son, who believes his father will come back when the maple leaves turn red. The drama ends on the two of them standing by the river.