Pearl Buck

Pearl Buck, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist once reviled by the Beijing authorities for her anti-Communist views, is being rehabilitated in China nearly 20 years after her death. Chinese literary scholars recently held a symposium to reassess the works of the "old China hand," the official New China News Agency said today. Her numerous novels, many of them set in China and criticized as imperialist by the Communists, received a more objective appraisal at a meeting late last month, it said.

The "pearl" in the title of Anchee Min's sixth novel, "Pearl of China," is the Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck, who died in 1973 and spent much of her life in China. Min's latest — which explores the friendship between Buck and a Chinese girl called Willow — is a tribute to the author, as well as an act of expiation, as she explains in an author's note. "I was ordered to denounce Pearl Buck in China," she writes. "The year was 1971. … Trying to gain international support for rejecting Buck's China entry visa [to accompany President Nixon on his visit]

Your reviewer states that Pearl Buck is still anathema in China. A recent letter I received from the Foreign Affairs Office in the City of Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, confirms that the home Pearl Buck lived in in China is being restored as a museum with a collection of memorabilia. So where is the anathema? ESTELLE COLVIN, Chair U.S.-China People's Friendship Assn., San Diego Chapter SAN DIEGO

Valerie Harper has always mixed activism and art. The actress has worked to alleviate worldwide hunger and channeled her energies into feminist issues, such as abortion and rape. She's boycotted grapes, participated in the Poor People's March on Washington and demonstrated against targets ranging from General Motors to racism.

The Valley Center Union School District's agricultural program does more than teach skills. I wish all young people could have the opportunity to see the magic of a seed sprouting. They learn respect, responsibility and understanding of life. What was it Pearl Buck said? "Getting your feet in the soil is important for good mental health." Don't be short-sighted. The farm program is valuable. As Valley Center becomes urbanized, the farm experiences will become even more precious.

I am writing in reference to the intriguing front-page story on "the ancient Chinese craft" of feng shui (wind-water), which is "interwoven with superstition, astrology and Chinese philosophical concept." In China feng shui geomancers decide where a family should bury its dead relatives and often they choose the best piece of land on the family's tiny farm. Eighty percent of the population is agrarian. My friend Dr. J. Lossing Buck, Pearl Buck's (incidentally the above subject is discussed in "The Good Earth")

In the centennial of Pearl S. Buck's birth, it remains a literary and political mystery that America's only woman winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is scorned or ignored by elites in her two homelands, the United States and China, while her books continue to sell in large quantities worldwide. The literary side of the mystery is mainly an American phenomenon--the fact that she is much out of fashion with the critics. This is hardly a new thing.

The "pearl" in the title of Anchee Min's sixth novel, "Pearl of China," is the Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck, who died in 1973 and spent much of her life in China. Min's latest — which explores the friendship between Buck and a Chinese girl called Willow — is a tribute to the author, as well as an act of expiation, as she explains in an author's note. "I was ordered to denounce Pearl Buck in China," she writes. "The year was 1971. … Trying to gain international support for rejecting Buck's China entry visa [to accompany President Nixon on his visit]

Pearl S. Buck was a superwoman who did it all as a dutiful daughter, wife, mother (she had one daughter and adopted another seven children), teacher, occasional hostess, philanthropist, indefatigable fund-raiser, feminist and prolific writer.

Valerie Harper has always mixed activism and art. The actress has worked to alleviate worldwide hunger and channeled her energies into feminist issues, such as abortion and rape. She's boycotted grapes, participated in the Poor People's March on Washington and demonstrated against targets ranging from General Motors to racism.

Pearl S. Buck was a superwoman who did it all as a dutiful daughter, wife, mother (she had one daughter and adopted another seven children), teacher, occasional hostess, philanthropist, indefatigable fund-raiser, feminist and prolific writer.

In his very laudatory essay on Pearl Buck, history teacher James C. Thomson Jr. tells us--incredibly--that the movie version of Buck's "The Good Earth" "had more viewers than any in history until 'Gone With the Wind.' " Mr. Thomson may be a history teacher, but he sure doesn't know his Hollywood history. Though brilliantly done, "The Good Earth" lost $496,000 in the first five years following its release (early in 1937). This made it one of the biggest financial losers in MGM history.

In the centennial of Pearl S. Buck's birth, it remains a literary and political mystery that America's only woman winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is scorned or ignored by elites in her two homelands, the United States and China, while her books continue to sell in large quantities worldwide. The literary side of the mystery is mainly an American phenomenon--the fact that she is much out of fashion with the critics. This is hardly a new thing.

Pearl Buck, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist once reviled by the Beijing authorities for her anti-Communist views, is being rehabilitated in China nearly 20 years after her death. Chinese literary scholars recently held a symposium to reassess the works of the "old China hand," the official New China News Agency said today. Her numerous novels, many of them set in China and criticized as imperialist by the Communists, received a more objective appraisal at a meeting late last month, it said.

I am writing in reference to the intriguing front-page story on "the ancient Chinese craft" of feng shui (wind-water), which is "interwoven with superstition, astrology and Chinese philosophical concept." In China feng shui geomancers decide where a family should bury its dead relatives and often they choose the best piece of land on the family's tiny farm. Eighty percent of the population is agrarian. My friend Dr. J. Lossing Buck, Pearl Buck's (incidentally the above subject is discussed in "The Good Earth")

The Valley Center Union School District's agricultural program does more than teach skills. I wish all young people could have the opportunity to see the magic of a seed sprouting. They learn respect, responsibility and understanding of life. What was it Pearl Buck said? "Getting your feet in the soil is important for good mental health." Don't be short-sighted. The farm program is valuable. As Valley Center becomes urbanized, the farm experiences will become even more precious.