She was sent to Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia; after graduation in 1914 she returned to China.
On 30 May 1917 Pearl married John Lossing Buck, an American agricultural expert originally from upstate New York. He was employed by the Presbyterian Mission Board to teach American farming techniques to the Chinese. After their marriage the Bucks lived in remote northern China, where they often traveled, visiting the Chinese farmers and engaging them in conversation. In 1921 her only natural child, Carol, was born. (During this marriage a second daughter, Janice, was adopted.)
Later in 1921 the Bucks moved to Nanking, where he taught rural economics and she taught literature part-time at the University of Nanking, Southeastern University, and Chung Yang University. In Nanking modern ideas from the West had already begun to infiltrate the old traditional Chinese customs and ways. The young Chinese felt trapped between these opposing forces; this situation would become one of Buck's major themes in her early writing.
In 1922 she began to write essays on her impressions of a country caught in the throes of change. Her first published article, titled "In China, Too," appeared in the 23 January issue of Atlantic Monthly.
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