The Good Earth, Wang Lung is a Insimple peasant who makes good by hard work and incredibly good luck.

As the book opens, he is about to take a wife, a plain woman with big feet whom he purchased from the great House of Hwang. O-lan is a good wife, laconic almost to a fault, fertile, and a willing worker beside him in the fields.

She bears him first a son, then another son, then a daughter, next a daughter who dies at birth, and finally twins, a son and a daughter. A drought and crop failure forces the family to seek refuge in a city, where Wang Lung pulls a rickshaw. One day, as if by magic, Wang Lung is swept along by a street gang of looters until he stands alone before a terrified fat man who offers to give him gold in exchange for his...