Chinese Farmers In The Cross-Culture Perspective

The American novelist Pearl S. Buck, Nobel Prize winner, made her great contributions to the cultural exchange between China and the United States with the publication of the Chinese theme novel The Good Earth based on her own China's experience, which introduces the unrecognized country China to the western countries in the cross-cultural perspectives in that time. The novel mainly displays the Chinese farmers'feelings of farmland and family ideas and shows Buck's affirmative attitude towards her ideal wish for the Chinese farmers. Although she could not break through the shackles from western colonial literature, it is important both realistically and theoretically to have further studies of the historical significance that Buck has made in the present time of globalization.The novel The Good Earth was received a close attention by the West when it was first published, of which the significance of the novel was that when the West had little knowledge of China, it was Pearl S. Buck who made a vivid description of Chinese farmers with their specific characteristics, making the West people have a fresh view on China. The Western people got to know, via the novel, that Chinese people were not the'sick man of East Asia'with a pig tail and a pair of bound feet, having the addiction to opium smoking, on the contrary, they were human beings just like the western people, and they were also struggling for their survival. Like any other farmers around the world, they, the Chinese farmers, cherished the earth, that is to say, they had a close tie with the earth and land. Pearl S. Buck bridged the gap between the West and China through her words, especially at the point of westerners'really understanding the Chinese people. Her love for China and her solicitude for the fate of Chinese farmers had already been far beyond her national boundaries and her political stand. This kind of emotions of hers was full of the meanings of humanity, which had changed the misrepresent recognition to the Chinese farmers possessed by the Americans since the nineteenth century."Among those who loved China,"stated by American scholar Isaacs1"who attempted to explain to Americans the Chinese farmers, and no one could do better than Pear S. Buck."The author of this thesis thinks that although the works by Pearl S. Buck have been studied and researched by both domestic and overseas scholars for decades, yet, all they focused was on the farmers of China, who left a large amount of impression on foreigners; how to understand Chinese farmers through reading an English novel. It involves the outsiders in cross-culture perspective cognize the Chinese farmers, meanwhile there was a limitation in the aspect of cultural gaps and political stand, which brought some deviation and illusion to Chinese farmers.Pearl S. Buck wrote the novel The Good Earth in a cross-culture perspective in English. Though characters are not many and the structure is simple, and what she narrates is the common stories taking place in rural area of China, yet, the significance and the meaning are quite profound. From an ups and downs history of a farmer family, the novel indicated all the things that happened at that time: starvation, rebellion, turmoil, conflicts of political concepts and the gaps between cities and countries. The novel also embodied the diligence and wisdom of the Chinese farmers as well as their corruption after they became rich. The Nobel Prize Committee made a'vivid, true and epic description'about the Chinese farmers'life happening in the novel. Among of which the evaluation of this'epic description'was the most pertinent, because it really stated out the experiences of Chinese farmers: an experience from poor to rich, and from rich to degrading. This Chinese farmer figure had a profound meaning at contemporary. It has still remained unique in modern works on Chinese farmer issues. In this paper, by researching of Chinese farmer images from the cross-cultural point of view, the common characteristics of the Chinese farmers could be come up with so as to discover new features and try to find out some misunderstanding and illusion made by the deviation in cross-culture perspective, and then manage to give an explanation and clarification.