She remained there until reaching the age of seventeen, learning to speak Chinese before English (her parents declined to live in the foreigners' compound in Chinkiang, choosing instead to live among the Chinese) but beginning to read and write in the less difficult English alphabet system. Although her mother encouraged her as a very young child to write something every week, her first direct literary influence was her Chinese nurse, who fascinated her with numerous folk tales of magic and adventure.
Buck's first published works appeared in the Shanghai Mercury, an English-language newspaper that had a weekly edition for children; she also wrote for the Randolph-Macon Woman's College paper after returning to the United States for further schooling. In 1927, Buck found herself back in China, this time in Nanking at the time communists were invading the city with the intention of killing all foreigners. Thanks to the aid of a few loyal friends and servants, Buck and her family managed to escape death by the narrow margin of ten minutes. Her home, however, as well as the manuscript of her first novel, was destroyed in the fire following the raid.
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