For all that makes it discomfiting, or potentially discomfiting, I loved it. There are aspects of The Good Earth that will make it a nonstarter for many readers. It is of its time, and the way we view it will continue to vary and change. Today he is one of the more respected and successful financiers in the “new China. The Good Earth is certainly a classic, but it is not timeless. Theres a fair amount of suspense as well, and just a little blood (nothing of concern for readers at this level). Shan has lived this history, suffered from its excesses and thrived thanks to the opening. This book is heavier on the science than on the fiction, with loads of real and fictional scientific detail and discussions between uncle and nephew about what they observe and how to determine the best path. It tells of the power of a musical theme and how it can be recognized as true simply by the fact that had a lesser composer varied it in any way a listener with a good ear would have immediately known the variation to be false. It is also a story that mirrors China’s dizzying recent history: the Cultural Revolution, with all its madness the opening to the United States, with all the promise it held and Deng Xiaoping’s decision to unleash a market-based system, with all the changes it wrought. Buck prefaces The Good Earth with a lengthy epigraph from Proust two authors who seemingly could not be more unalike. “Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America” is Weijian Shan’s deeply affecting memoir. What may have seemed an unremarkable moment was anything but: The professor was among the first Chinese academics to come to the U.S., and he carried with him, beyond his suitcase and credentials, a collection of improbable and harrowing experiences. His sponsors met him, welcomed “our new scholar from China” and took him for a meal in Chinatown.

28, 1980, a young professor from Beijing stepped off a plane at the San Francisco airport. Weijan Shang in his office at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, 1990.

The good earth book review