Pearl S. Buck was born in the USA in 1892 and carried to China as an infant by her missionary parents. She grew up in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, nursed by a Chinese amah, playing with Chinese children — Chinese was her first language, with a fluent Zhenjiang accent.
At 17 she returned to America for college, then came back to teach in China. In 1931 she published The Good Earth, the story of the Chinese farmer Wang Lung and his family living by the land. It became a million-copy bestseller, and in 1938 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature — the first American woman to do so.
Buck wrote over 70 books, many set in China. She founded the East and West Association to promote mutual understanding and adopted mixed-race children. Even in old age she said, "I have been deeply tied to China all my life."
Buck spent the first 40 years of her life in China and considered herself both American and Chinese. In 1991 her former home in Zhenjiang was restored as a museum. An American woman who told the story of Chinese farmers to the whole world.
Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973), American novelist and Nobel laureate, came to China at four months old with her missionary parents and lived here nearly 40 years, calling China her "second homeland".
Her Chinese childhood: she grew up in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, learning Chinese, eating Chinese food and living among Chinese people - her nanny, neighbours and teachers were all Chinese, and Chinese was effectively her first language. This background made her understand rural China better than any Western writer.
The Good Earth (1931): the novel follows the Anhui farmer Wang Lung and his family from poverty to prosperity through floods, famine and upheaval. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932, and in 1938 Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature for her "rich and truly epic descriptions of Chinese peasant life".
Its significance: in Western literature the Chinese had often been mysterious or backward; Buck first portrayed Chinese peasants as flesh-and-blood people with joys and sorrows, changing Western stereotypes.
Promoting Chinese culture: she translated Water Margin (as All Men Are Brothers) and built bridges of East-West exchange. She adopted several Chinese children and later founded the Pearl S. Buck Foundation to help orphans.
Her name and homes: the Chinese name Saizhenzhu was her own choice; her former residence and memorial stand in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, and Pearl S. Buck International operates in Philadelphia, USA.
A famous line from her later years: "the thing I most wanted in life was to be a bridge between China and the West." She succeeded. Today readers of The Good Earth still feel her deep love for China. If you visit Zhenjiang, her former residence is in the city centre - worth a detour.
A figure on The Good Earth: it was the best-selling China-themed novel in 20th-century America, translated into over 60 languages. With one novel, Buck made millions of Western readers first "see" Chinese peasant life. The power of literature can outmatch armies.
