The Good Earth《It is must read》

I have heard of Good Earth years ago but I can’t find an English version in China. Last week I found it in the local library among a heap of books.

Pearl S. Buck is a Noble Prize-winner and famous for her stories about Chinese farmers. What she writes in the book reflects the character and destiny of Chinese people which hasn’t changed for decades and decades. I have read some comments on Pear S. Buck in China--some Chinese people criticize her for the false and unfair description of China.

Yes Pearl is a foreigner in China she may not know as much as Chinese people but as far as I concern she gives an objective and profound observation of China and its conflicts. I really enjoy this books and I spend days and nights to read it!

Generally the book presents a graphic view of China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals through a story of an honest farmer Wang Lung. The story begins at Wang’s marriage and ends when Wang is going to die.

At that time poor people have no money to marry a woman. They may ask the rich family to give them a slave if they don’t want to keep. Wang was given a woman call O-lan an ugly and quiet kitchen slave in the rich family of Hwang. This woman works days and nights with Wang even before she gives birth to the child.

For their hardship they harvest more food than before and manage to buy a rich land from the declining family of Hwang which is overspending and consuming too much opium for years. It seems that their life will becomes better because they have the lands the root of the farmers. But a drought destroys their dreams.

Terrible things happen. People have nothing to eat. They have to eat weed soil even human flesh. Everything will become evil when people are starving to death. Maybe it is hard to understand and people may ask: is there any government aid? There is not such thing in that time and situation still not change nowadays in some remote villages.

Wang don’t want to sell his land for he believes the land can save him in the future. He leaves with the family to the southern city with a bag of beans given by his neighbor Ching and two silvers by selling all the furniture. In order to survive O-lan and their three children go to the street to beg and Wang pull riksha for the passengers.

It is hard but at least they survive by very little money they can get. Wang never forget his lands. It strikes his heart days by days. Later Wang has to give up the job for it is dangerous to walk on the street before the war broke and men are at the risk of laboring for war for no return.

The war forces him back to the lands. After winter fields become wet and good to plant. One night Wang finds out that there is bag in O-lan’s bosom. Inside it there are expensive jewels! O-lan takes them from the loosen brick of a rich family of southern city. Wang feels uncomfortable to keep the jewels but his desire of land drives him to exchange the jewels for pieces of land from Hwang. Only two pearls are kept by O-lan wrapped in the bag and hidden in her bosom. Wang do not know why O-lan wants to keep them for she is ugly and never put on them as earrings.

When Wang becomes richer and richer he feels boring and idle for he has hired people to farm the lands for him. His desire for land and gold is fulfilled and now he looks at his wife: ‘there is nothing he does not know of her and nothing new which he may expect or hope from her.’(p167) He dislikes and avoids O-lan for she is not beautiful not with a pair of small binding feet and her eternal silence. He becomes angry with O-lan and the angry grows ‘because he remember that all the lands of his he could not have bought in a life time if O-lan had not seized the handful of jewels from the rich man’s house and if she had not given them to him when he commanded her.’

In China man has great power in the family. Woman is just a child-birth machine and in the poor family woman is also a good labor without paid. The relationship is not equal even woman contribute a lot to the family she still has to obey man. The situation change in the modern China but the root of androcentrism still exists for example man would prefer marry a virgin man can’t tolerate if his wife earn more….

Wang is then looking for new entertainment. He falls in love with a harlot called Lotus in a great tea shop. The description of the desire for Lotus is brilliant ‘Yet never could he grasp her wholly and this it was which kept him fevered and thirsty even if she gave him his will of her. When O-lan had come to his house it was health to his flesh and he lusted for her robustly as a beast for its mate and he took her and was satisfied and he forgot her and did his work content. But there was no such content now in his love for this girl and there was no health in her for him. At night when she would have no more of him pushing him out of the door petulantly with her small hands suddenly strong on his shoulders his silver thrust into her bosom he went away hungry as he came. It was as though a man dying of thirst drank the salt water of the sea which though it is water yet dries his blood into thirst and yet greater thirst so that in the end he dies maddened by his very drinking. He went in to her and he had his will of her again and again and he came away unsatisfied.’(P 181)

Wang even takes the pearls from O-lan for the new woman he likes. This act shatters O-lan’s heart and dignity and in the later life Wang feels shame about himself. But at that time Wang only cares what Lotus want and later marries her to satisfy his desire.

More than one woman under one roof is not for peace. O-lan never speaks with Lotus and Lotus continually demand luxury and good food. The family conflicts between women children and relatives never stop in Wang’s family. Poor people may be misery and rich people will also have their own problems.

When O-lan falls ill and become dying Wang looses interest about lands and Lotus. He realizes what a great part of O-lan contributed to the family and how she endures all cruel acts and disrespect from her husband. Selfless she is she never complain a word. She feels proud that even though she is not pretty she marry a man and give birth to five children.

After O-lan dies Wang has to face unrest troubles in his family: his elder son knows nothing but spending the second son concerns only money and business Lotus never stops eating and consuming his uncle demands continuously and later the war breaks out….He feels that time turns him into an old man only he want is peace but he will never gets it until he die.

The society changes by the time. Lands will be free if revolution is successes. And the elder son and the second son plan to sell his father’s lands to turn money into other business. Though Wang commands not to sell his lands saying land is root to man he still can not change anything.

It hurts me when I came to the ending knowing that lands defiantly would be sold once Wang died. Lands do be freed when RPC is established but lands never divided equally to farmers. The government just takes all the lands from landlords to be the national wealth and gives back very little land to farms. A lot of farmers still lead a poor life and they won’t get enough money by farming. Rich people can get lands easily and build apartments and skyscrapers to earn high profit. Rich become richer poor become poorer. Nobody willing to be farmer and they can’t survive as farmer. Poor people have to pour into big cities to be low-paid workers.

Conflicts between farmer-workers and oppidans never rest. Wang’s love of land and the dislike of land of his sons reflect and preview the destiny of new society.

I feel strong love of this book because I am a Chinese and I understand what she writes or because the misery life of O-lan strikes my heart. Nevertheless it is must reading!