Post by Isaac Ho, the Admin on Aug 24, 2014 15:24:09 GMT -5
WHY WAS PEARL S. BUCK SO SUCCESSFULLY IN HER FIRST NOVEL ABOUT
CHINA, TITLED: THE GOOD EARTH."?
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a critical analysis by Isaac Ho, the Admin & Founder of this Forum
Fortunately, as I now could recall, I was in my early teens and probably no more than fourteen years old, when I first noticed on
a shelf of the USIS library at Kuala Lumpur in 1953 on this book, titled: The Good Earth.
Then, as I remembered now, the book didn't have a dust cover and the hardbound volume was dark brown in color with silver
lettering which drew my attention.
I checked out the book and began reading on my way home. The English which the author, Pearl S. Buck, expressed herself was
concise, comprehensible and simple to understand and remember, even to this day, some sixty years later...!
I am still very fond of this book and read it as often as I can to picture myself in China many years ago...!!!
The descriptions Pearl used to described the rise of the hardworking and frugal Chinese farmer, Wang Lung and his submissive
former slave wife O-Lan was rather poetic, written in a prose form, but what really stood out was those unforgettable words
Pearl S. Buck used to draw attention to the reader, like me, and at large.
The Good Earth was written in before 1930 and printed in America by John D. Company on 1931.
Initially, as I research on the book, Pearl S. Buck, for want of better title, simply titled her book: Wang Lung...!
However, the publisher and editor found it necessary to change the title from "Wang Lung" to that of "The Good Earth,"
presumably that the rich and fertile earth of China was such that the simple farmer like Wang Lung, through careful nurturing
of the field and manuring, he could produce a good and perhaps a profitable harvest of rice just near China's famous river,
The Yang Tze Kiang. Besides the title Wang Lung would be incomprehensible to most Western readers at the time.
The main story of Wang Lung, the poor and struggling farmer who subsequently became very rich by owning more land than
he could cultivate, was centred around Anhwei province of central China and very similar to the rural village in which she resided,
called Nanhsuchou, where Pearl and her husband Lossing Buck had spent the early years of their married life.
This classical novel simple but the eventful or exciting plot followed closely the principal character, the rise of the poor and frugal
Chinese farmer Wang Lung (or Wong Loong in Cantonese) from his day of marriage up till his old age.
And indeed, Wang Lung's defeats and triumphs definitely echoed the period of China between traditional post-Manchu dynasty
and the advent of Republic status and the revolution which subsequently brought China out of emperors and empresses,
thanks to our father of Chinese revolution, Dr. Sun Yat-sen...!
Hence, farmer Wang Lung's rural identity and his life's motives were shaped by his intimacy and closed relationship to his
land. And he has been brought up in an isolated, illiterate rural community in which patriarchal piety remained the core value and
survival did depended largely on an endless round of crushing or back-breaking physical labour.
The initial tiny parcel of land which Wang Lung cultivated with intensity of labour, day in and day out, has remained in the
family, handed out from generation to generation, but the soil needed to be enriched due to being over-cultivated, to coax
the land so that it would nurtured the young rice seedlings to grow into full-grained plants ready for harvest.
Added to the vows which were plentiful in this land of Wang Lung and the rice farms of central China, they had to combat the
elements - unpredictable locust invasions, heavy wind and unfavourable rain and also the ever present droughts which ruined
the rice harvest which depended heavily on the fields being fully flooded the moment the rice seedlings were planted.
Therefore, without the aid of science and lack of agricultural knowledge, the farmers all over China, like simple Wang Lung,
turned to the divination and frequent prayful homages to the god of the field, The Earth God, to which he and the likes of him,
would pray for protection from pests and harmful forces of nature.
Under such natural conditions, the Chinese civilization, its continuous history, its lively culture, rich traditions and norms depended
on from one generation to the next, which survive for nearly five thousand years ever since, the first Chinese civilization begun
at a bend in the Hwang Ho River in northern China...!
Wang Lung, the simple but astute Chinese farmer indeed, portrays significant and traditionally, the life of a frugal peasant to
this day and age in rural China - carefully nurturing the fields for continuous and guaranteed survival, enriching the overworked
soil by traditional methods of waste distribution into the field from that of countless chickens, geese, ducks, hogs, donkeys,
water buffaloes and other beasts of burden which had been put to good use in nurturing the fields of grain and which would bring
about a good harvest. These grains are then sold to the towns' merchants who would be prepared to pay the laborious farmers the
ultimate reward - genuine silver coins - then the current rate of exchange.
Month after tiring months of toil in the sun-lit fields, hardworking and frugal Wang Lung and his faithful companion O-Lan nurtured
their fields and coax them to produce the best grain for the ready market in the nearby walled town.
In good years, Wang Lung and O-Lan did produced good rice and in return for their intensive labour, they hoarded a good
collection of silver coins which his clever wife secreted behind a loosen mud brick inside the wall of their mud home.
Then Wang Lung would walked upon the narrow ridge which divided the parcels of cultivated land and arrived at the gates of
town's rich man, House of Hwang, and turned in his hard-earned silver which was soon swiftly grasped in the sharp claws of the
hands of the lady which was too busy smoking opium and then used Wang Lung's money to buy more opium in order to
satisfy her lust and craving for the addicted opium habit.
And yet year after year, when the rice harvest would produced more silver for Wang Lung to own more land which once belonged
to the rich House of Hwang. And thus, with more land, Wang Lung would hired more hands to cultivate his fields so that he could
produce more grains to trade in the nearby walled town. So Wang Lung would gradually by din of careful and astute planning
increased in his great parcels of land to become a very rich farmer and even acquired a sing-song girl in town to become his
concubine much to the distress of his first wife O-Lan and his old father who was now closed to being deaf and blind and yet
able to comprehend the comings and goings of his restless son, Wang Lung, the prosperous and very successful rich farmer.
Upon the days of Wang Lung's old age and approach to death, he was horrified to hear that his sons were planning to sell
the precious land which made Wang rich. He reprimanded his sons and urged them never to sell the land because to sell them
would be like depriving them of being in living in luxury like now to be back to become hired labourers and landless. But his sons
unlike the frugal farmer in Wang Lung, never laboured in their father's rice fields but instead become scholars and idlers and
spenders of his father's money.
After the initial success of Pearl S. Buck in writing The Good Earth, a careful, honest and analytical essay of rural life in central
China regarding the life of the country's frugal and hardworking farmers, she began, as readers in America and throughout
the wide world desired to know more about life in general in China, she soon produced the sequels like: A House Divided, Sons,
and lastly, The Mother. These three subsequent novels followed the same theme about the rural life of farmers and their
offsprings - the ups and downs, their triumphs and failures - which indirectly reflected on the rise of China from its humble
beginning to this day - a powerful world power and an acknowledged nuclear power too - both respected by friends and foes alike!
By being recognized as a very successful writer, Pearl S. Buck returned to his homeland in North America and continued to
write about life in general in China and even assisted China as one of its official mouth piece when China itself was engaged
in a life and death struggle in fighting the imperial forces of Japland intruding and massacring the innocent and unarmed Chinese.
Pearl S. Buck also wrote several critical pieces after the communists of Mao Tze Dong successfully took over China and after the
defeat of both the cowardly and brutal Jap invaders and the corrupted Kuomintang armies of Generalissmo Chang Kai Shek, who
eventually retreated to Taiwan.
On the whole, Pearl S. Buck wrote more than a dozen novels based on the current issues of China and most of them are still
popular and in print to this day.
Pearl's successful book: The Good Earth, soon became America's book-of-the-month issue, an honour and recognition bestowed
timely on her continuous churning out popular books about China based on her keen observation and real devotion to China and
her people.
However, she was getting on in age, and in 1972, when Pearl S. Buck heard, through the official grape-vine perhaps, of President
Nixon's impending visit to Beijing, she was planning to go along with his entourage.
But the Chinese foreign affairs department, sadly and without qualms, turned down Pearl S. Buck's application to obtain the
necessary visa based on the complain of the one of the Gang of Four - Mao's wife, Chiang Ching, which hated Pearl S. Buck just
because she sided with another famous Shanghai actress named Ying Ying in favour of Chiang Ching, who was instrumental
in objecting to Pearl's visit to China and pressured influential Chou Enlai, who turned down Pearl's visa application.
Pearl S. Buck's final desire to pay an official visit to China was denied and she died in 1973 in the Green Hills Farm, Penysalvania
and her coffin was interned inside the farm under a big oak tree.
Her Green Hills Farm has today been transform into the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, a charitable organization and attracted
thousands of visitors each year, principally to visit her vast library and to gaze at her Nobel Prize in Literature award's
medallion and diploma and her collection of her own books about China and also her precious collection of classical Chinese
books which she could read and which her 5-year labour in translating one of China most popular classic - Shui Hu Chuan or
The Water Margin about the 108 righteous outlaws of Liang Shan P'o, and she titled: All Men are Brothers. This two-volume
publication is still available in print today.
Finally, in summing up about Pearl S. Buck literal writings about contemporary China and its revolution, she has indeed done
a tremendous and thankless job - without blame nor blemishes.
Pearl S. Buck's loyalty and devotion to the cause of the Chinese people and China itself are both unquestionable and without
doubt. Her affection for things Chinese has now earned the respect of the people by having her own home in China
refurbished and rehabitated and even the Nanjing University has run a course about her writing to day and she is now
"fondly" remembered in China. Hopefully, forever more...!
Here is an except from Pearl S. Buck, first and most acknowledged classic about THE GOOD EARTH:-
"It was Wang Lung's marriage day. At first, opening his eyes in the blackness of the curtains about his bed, he could not
think why the dawn seemed different from any other. The mud house was still except for the faint, grasping cough of his
old father, whose room, was opposite to his own across the middle room. Every morning the old man's cough was the first
sound to be heard. Wang Lung usually lay listening to it and moved only when he heard it approaching nearer and when
he heard the door of his father's room squeak upon its wooden hinges..."
Wang Lung after shaving his head by the town's barber, was now going to the wet market to buy food so that his future
wife O-Lan after claiming her from being slave from the rich House of Hwang would cook for several guests which he had
invited to his home as a simple marriage celebration, and so what did he buy for his dinner tonight? :-
"He went to the market, then, and brought two pounds of pork and watched the butcher as he wrapped it in a dried lotus
leaf, and then, hesitatingly, he bought also six ounces of beef. When all has been bought, even to fresh squares of bean-curd,
shivering in a jelly upon its leaf, he went to a candle-maker's shop and there he bought a pair of incense sticks. Then he
turned his steps with great shyness toward the House of Hwang (to claim among the slaves one as his wife, O-Lan)..."
From the above excerpts, a discerning reader could judge, Pearl S. Buck's choice of words in English which is simple,
expressive, artful, direct and understandable. It is also descriptive to draw the reader's attention to use the economic
simplicity to described an event which would not be easily forgotten...as the reader reads on...! Happy reading...!