Post by Isaac Ho, the Admin on Jul 13, 2014 14:33:58 GMT -5
PEARL S. BUCK IS ALWAYS REMEMBERED IN CHINA
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by Isaac Ho, the Admin of this Forum
I wonder how many of our visitors to this Forum remember or know the late Ms. Pearl S. Buck who has written many novels about
China which is based on her keen observation and presence in China along with her ardent missionary parents?
Pearl S. Buck was born in Virginia and raised up in China along China's Yangtze Kiang River, the longest river in the region.
According to an outstanding and reliable biography about Pearl S. Buck, she grew up learning Chinese and became extremely
fluent with the language prior to her learning the English language, while spending a spell as a growing young adult in America
and there attending a lady's college for a while.
When she was still young, she was often taken care of by her closed Chinese servant which treated and protected her as if she was
her child. And very often tended to shelter her from punishments by her very strict Christian parents.
In her tender age, Pearl S. Buck, introduced by her Chinese Ahmah, became keenly aware of her surroundings and mixing and
playing with her neighbours who were Chinese children and who dwelled around the village where her parents operated a church.
Pearl S. Buck learned the ways of her Chinese friend and had a flair for writing short stories about them in her personal diary.
After her brief college life in America (Pennsylvania), she returned to China and there she begun to assemble the detailed
information for her first book about her China to the far away American audience.
Her first book was called THE GOOD EARTH, a classic story of the Chinese farmer named Wang Lung and his frugal and devoted
wife, O Lan and together with their aging but wise father began to prosper and had money to buy more land until Wang rose
to become one of the richest farmer along the Yangtze River. Then a mighty drought and the swamping locusts brought
devastation to the land which forced the family to migrate south as beggars and a revolution brought them back with riches to
reclaim their land.
The success of Pearl S. Buck first novel about a farmer's life in China began to brought her with fame and fortune, as she
continued to write with accuracy and talent about lives in China.
All in she wrote more than twenty novels about China like - The Pavilion of Women, A House divided and Sons (the two were
in fact the sequel to The Good Earth, which collectively the three were known as the Earth Triology), Kinfolk (the story of the
lively American Chinese family), The Patriot and Dragon Seed (Chinese war against the despicable Jap invaders), the Imperial
Woman (life of the last Empress-Dowager of the Manchu or Ching Dynasty) and etc.
Her most significant writing about China was when she was still in residence in the country and along with her Chinese tutor,
she translated China's famous martial arts novel called Shui Hui Chuan - a classic story about the 108 martial arts heroes hiding
among the reedy lake in Shandong Province as political refugees of the decadent Sung Emperor and there raised the rebellion
standard against corrupted and greedy government officials of the empire.
The Shui (meaning water) Hui (lake) Chuan (story or legend) is still popular to this day and Pearl S. Buck retitled her translated
version in English as ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS, after a popular maxim of Confucius, the famous Chinese philosophical poet.
ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS the two-volume publication is still in print today and the English rendering of the novel is very accurately
done by Pearl S. Buck that a reader who read the book would think he would be reading in Chinese, so masterly was her
talented translation technique.
In 1937, on the basis of her voluminous writing about China, she was the first American women writer to be awarded the
prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature.
At the Nobel Presentation in Sweden, Pearl S. Buck, was required to give a lecture on the subject of her Nobel Award, and she
address the audience with her presentation of a paper entitled: THE CHINESE NOVEL.
Pearl S. Buck is well remembered in China today for her famous writings about life there that her former official residence at
Nanjing University was renovated and was opened to the public.
Former US President George H. W. Bush visited the Pearl S. Buck House in Nanjing in the year 1998 as he visited China.
Bush explained to millions of Americans back home that he had avidly read Pearl S. Buck's novels about China and thus gain
an appreciation of the Chinese and their literature.
Pearl S. Buck died in her farm in Pennysalvania and interned there, but her library of Chinese books and her writings on China
are opened to the visitors.
In conclusion, Pearl S. Buck has bridged the gap of international understanding about China via her profused writings on the
subject of the Chinese people and their classic literature.
Her contributions are immense and her Chinese novels have brought her fame and fortune too.
MGM, the Hollywood Studio, made a story of Pearl S. Buck's story THE GOOD EARTH into a motion picture in 1938 and it is
still available on DVD today.
english.peopledaily.com.cn/n/2014/0711/c98649-8754237.html