in my early 30s, i had this landlord. it was the cheapest place i could find with a walkable daily commute, and it certainly was cheap. it was a complete dump. zero insulation in a continental/transition zone (hot/humid summers, cold/wet winters), no a/c. disgusting carpet. had been unoccupied for 6 months because the last tenant got busted for being the neighborhood dealer. i don't like to say that part of town was dangerous because it's not like bodies were dropping or people flashing gats while conducting business, but it was definitely a vibe some nights where it was better to walk a different way or cut through a yard.
anyway, i was there for a few years and only once did i have to go to the landlord's "offices": to sign the lease and drop off the deposit $. it was insane. it was like in part of an office of some old abandoned warehouse in an actually fucked up part of town. it looked like some shit out of Se7en crossed with a reality show about hoarders. the office had piles of papers and junk everywhere. broken and stacked furniture, damp smells. the landlord's wife was there and did not seem successful by even the lowest bar. apparently they owned a dozen rental properties and mine was the shittiest, but i could not tell where the money was going. so i assume it was some kind of drug/gambling addiction scenario and maybe this property empire was an inheritance.
don't get me wrong. i still loathed them, because they were absolute shit at getting things fixed and nickle-n-dimed everything. one time i replaced a shower head that broke with the exact same part (easy to find, because it was the cheapest option at $12) and took that off my rent with a note explaining what happened and i got this whole pissed off phone call about how i needed to get permission to do that first/not to do it again because they "have parts".
it's wild how some people can basically be getting a shitpot of free money every month and fuck it up somehow.
I read this when I was younger and I really enjoyed it. Now that I have a really advanced case of communist brain worms would I still be able to enjoy it if I reread it?
Who knows? It's mostly about Chinese people and the time of the 1919 revolution, so if you're into that, then go for it.
I read and enjoyed The Good Earth twice but Pearl S. Buck was a colonizer and a missionary. The PRC would not allow her to visit China. I think her work has sympathy for Chinese people—until they actually start to take control of their lives. Colonizers are also notably absent from The Good Earth. Spoiler alert but the story is basically: life sucks for poor Chinese people, especially women, until they get incredibly rich and lucky, at which point they turn into the oppressors. There is no alternative or escape from this.
I strongly recommend From Wonso Pond as well / instead. It’s on libgen.
I don't think she was saying that this is how life should be. She was saying this is what life was back then, in pre-revolutionary (1919 revolution, not 1949) China.
Colonizers are also notably absent from The Good Earth.
Wang Lung is in the middle of nowhere in rural Anhui. He meets a grand total of two foreigners in the whole book, and one is a Jesus freak and Buck ridicules his ridiculous proselytizing.
Read Dragon Seed if you want an account about how westerners hung China out to dry while they concentrated their efforts on saving Jewish people in Europe.
