Editing Character:Stone Dragon (section)

== Character Description ==

Tien Hsiao-Lin used to be an ordinary housewife, the quiet, mousy trophy companion of Carl Jansen, a rich medical techology developer.  Sue Lynn, as she called herself at the time, married the charming American when she was only 16 years old, when he visited Hong Kong on a college trip.  After coming to the United States, she set about assimilating, having a family, and doing everything she could to forget the life she'd grown up knowing.

Shortly after the birth of her second child, though, she began to notice a change in Carl's behavior - or perhaps it was not a change at all, and her increasing self-confidence, spurred by the responsibility of motherhood, merely allowed her to see what had been there all along.  Carl was constantly interested in her family and culture, asking questions about her ancestors' inheritances and family stories.  Whenever she tried to beg off from answering, he was push her, try to wheedle her into answering, sometimes even complaining that her stubbornness was unworthy of a wife who had received so much from her husband.  Though she tried to explain that living in America was easier if she did not try to think about where she'd come from, he was unwilling to accept her answers, and always pushed harder.  It was a small thing, as marriage trouble go, but it unsettled her.

Finally, Carl demanded that they vacation in China to see where her family had come from.  She protested weakly, but away they went, Carl, Sue Lynn and their two daughters.  They spent more than a week driving back roads and staying in tiny, cramped inns.  Carl constantly asked the locals about legends and history, and one morning he seemed to be truly excited about something.  He suggested they visit a cave he had heard about, do a little amateur spelunking.  Always an athletic woman, Sue Lynn agreed, though she was dubious about taking their 2 year old and 5 year old girls with them.  Carl insisted it would be safe.  At first, he seemed to be right - the cave was large and level, and their flashlights turned up only a few lichen-covered rocks.  Then Carl found a dark, seemingly bottomless hole in a chamber deep within the cave.  Almost frenzied, he produced rope, a climbing harness, and pitons, and prepared to descend into the shaft.  Against Sue Lynn's desperate protests, he disappeared from view.  Moments later, the earth began to shake.  Rocks skittered down the walls, and the deep "boom" of a collapsing tunnel echoed from somewhere.  Sue Lynn screamed, called Carl's name, but she heard nothing.  Fearig for her life and that of her girls, she ran... just ahead of the cave-in.

By the time the rescuers excavated the cave, there was no sign of Carl.

Lost, Hsiao-Lin returned to her family in Hong Kong, where her mother told her an amazing secret - her family were the keepers of an ancient duty, the protection of the Dragon's Eye, a cursed artifact of unspeakable power.  In order to facilitate their duty, the Tien family had been granted knowledge of the Stone Dragon, a martial art technique that would allow its user to become almost as powerful as the <i>tien long</i>, the celestial dragons, themselves.  Hsiao-Lin was to be the next keeper, but she refused.  She had a life in America, and two children to take care of.  She returned to the United States and tried to go on with her life.

A few months after she came back to the States, however, tragedy struck.  Her daughters were kidnapped from their preschool, and the witnesses identified the man who took them as Carl - but Carl with powers unlike anything Hsiao-Lin had ever seen; strength enough to knock down a wall and tear a teacher literally in half when she tried to stop him.  When she called her mother, frantic for some reassurance, her mother told her what she had not thought to mention before: the cave where Carl had disappeared had been the resting place of the Dragon's Eye, and Carl was now suffering under its curse.  Her only hope of rescuing her children was to accept the duties of the Stone Dragon.  She flew back to Hong Kong at once.

She eventually rescued her daughters, but her husband, now calling himself Jiang Shi, escaped with the Dragon's Eye.  Leaving her daughters under the protection of her mother, Hsiao-Lin now wanders the world, upholding the laws of Heaven and punishing evil, while forever hoping to find Jiang Shi and end his evil for good.