From Conflict To Reception:the Cultural Dialogue In Pearl S. Buck’s Peony

In recent years, cross-cultural communication studies grow to be a hot topic in academic research. Because of her identity and long-term life experiences in China, Pearl S. Buck’s cross-cultural sense and thinking make her a veritable "Cross-Cultural Writer". The cross-cultural researches on her and her works have fully confirmed her contributions on intercultural communication. Although the researches are fruitful, most have regrettably involved a small number of her works such as East Wind:West Wind (1930), The House on the Earth (1935). Other works of similar themes such as Peony (1948) have not received due critical attention.Peony is the Buck’s one of the first novels which refer to the religious culture themes. It is a case in point for cross-culture studies. This thesis adopts Peony as study object to analyze the cultural conflicts, cultural coexistence and cultural reception between Chinese and Jews who lived in Kaifeng at the end of the1800s.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter gives a brief introduction to Buck’s literary achievement and the research situation of her works in terms of cross-culture both home and abroad. The second chapter analyzes conflicting views about love, about religion, and about Chinese outworn customs between Chinese and Jews due to their clinging to their own cultural traditions. The third chapter tries to prove that after years of communication, there appears a coexistence of cultural elements such as clothing, house and Synagogue in the Jewish community. The fourth chapter unfolds a picture of reception via diet and intermarriage. The intermarriage is not only the blood’s reception and confluence of the two races, but also heritage and development of the two cultures which take the families and children as the carrier. The Jews living in China have gradually abandoned their particular food taboos in religion and show great passion for some of the Chinese food. And the last part is the conclusion. In this novel, the author’s idea is to convey to us that in case of conflicts between two different cultures, people should be based on equality, respect and understand the cultural differences with the attitude of tolerance, and seek common opinions while reserving difference in order to maintain cultural diversity after mutual penetration and reach a new harmony and unity. That is moral and humane care which always persists in Buck’s work.