Jul 21, 2026 · 17 min · 9 segments
*Today, we’ll tell the bittersweet story of Pearl S. Buck, the American Nobel laureate who lived in China for the first half of her life at the turn of the last century and how the complications of a…
Scott PruittHost
In July 2026, visitors once again crowded into the former residence of Pearl S. Buck in Nanjing of eastern China's Jiangsu Province.
The elegant two-story brick house on the campus of Nanjing University has witnessed nearly a century of history.
It was there that Buck wrote some of her most influential works, including The Good Earth, the novel that would win the Pulitzer Prize and ultimately helped make her the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature.
The renewed attention to her former home has sparked fresh interest in a remarkable life that unfolded between two civilizations.
Pearl S. Buck remains one of the few writers who profoundly shaped how the West understood China.
To many Americans, during the first half of the 20th century, the Chinese farmers, mothers, scholars, and children in her books became the human face of a country that had long seemed distant and mysterious.
Although she was born in 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia, her parents were Presbyterian missionaries preparing to return to China.
Only a few months after her birth, they sailed across the Pacific and settled in Zhenjiang, a city along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province.
She later recalled that she grew up speaking both English and Chinese almost simultaneously.
Her mother ensured that she received a Western education at home, introducing her to Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, and, of course, the Bible.
Buck belonged fully to neither culture, yet understood both with remarkable intimacy.
Years later, she would describe herself as living between East and West, believing that each civilization had much to learn from the other.
In July 2026, visitors once again crowded into the former residence of Pearl S. Buck in Nanjing of eastern China's Jiangsu Province.
The elegant two-story brick house on the campus of Nanjing University has witnessed nearly a century of history.
It was there that Buck wrote some of her most influential works, including The Good Earth, the novel that would win the Pulitzer Prize and ultimately helped make her the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature.
The renewed attention to her former home has sparked fresh interest in a remarkable life that unfolded between two civilizations.
Pearl S. Buck remains one of the few writers who profoundly shaped how the West understood China.
To many Americans, during the first half of the 20th century, the Chinese farmers, mothers, scholars, and children in her books became the human face of a country that had long seemed distant and mysterious.
Although she was born in 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia, her parents were Presbyterian missionaries preparing to return to China.
Only a few months after her birth, they sailed across the Pacific and settled in Zhenjiang, a city along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province.
She later recalled that she grew up speaking both English and Chinese almost simultaneously.
Her mother ensured that she received a Western education at home, introducing her to Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, and, of course, the Bible.
Buck belonged fully to neither culture, yet understood both with remarkable intimacy.
Years later, she would describe herself as living between East and West, believing that each civilization had much to learn from the other.
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