Seminar held in China to re-evaluate Pearl S. Buck

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 ◆ Seminar held in China to re-evaluate Pearl S. Buck

A seminar on Pearl S. Buck concluded recently in Zhenjiang, this east China city with Chinese scholars discussing on re-evaluation of the works and deeds of the once controversial American author.

The seminar was held as part of a series of activities to mark the 110th anniversary of birth of the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes winner.

Professor Wang Yingguo, of Nanjing University's Department of Chinese Language and Literature said, "Comments Pearl Buck made about East and West dissatisfied both the Chinese and Americans before. However, as time passes, her remarks have proved correct in many circumstances."

Buck's description of the uncivilized state of the Old China annoyed some overseas Chinese, while her criticisms of religious colonialism enraged Christians in the United States.

A daughter of missionaries, Buck was brought to China soon after her birth in the United States and raised in Zhenjiang, where she stayed until she returned to the United States to study at university.

In China, she gathered materials for her best-known novel, "The Good Earth", which won her the Nobel Prize in 1938 for its graphic and ultimately sorrowful depiction of Chinese peasant's life.

Thanks to her multi-cultural background, Buck gradually realized different cultures had their own qualities and regarded them as all equal, said Professor Yao Junwei, of Zhenzhou University in Henan Province.

Yao held that Buck circumvented the meaningless disputes over whether eastern or western culture was superior, and sought harmonious co-existence and a merger of different cultures.

Buck was born on June 26, 1892 and died in 1973.