- Pearl
Sydenstricker Buck was a child who grew up very differently from most American
children in the late nineteenth century. She did not have the small town
American background with elm trees, horse drawn carriages, and presidents
that most children did. Buck’s childhood was that of rickshaws, rice,
and revolutions. Her American parents, her nanny, and the political
happenings of China influenced Pearl S. Buck’s provincial Chinese background.
Pearl Sydenstricker was born on June 26, 1982, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents, Absalom and Caroline, were home from their missionary work in China, due to Caroline’s illness. At the age of five months, Pearl and her older brother Edgar were taken to China. Pearl’s first memory of her Chinese home was of the gardens at her house in Tsingkiang-pu. Here is where she, her brother, and their nurse Wang Amah played (Doyle 113).
Wang Amah was one of the most influential and caring people in Buck’s young life.
"But I seem to remember a time when all my worlds circled about that small, blue-garbed figure. Then did I see no face but her brown wrinkled face bending over me, and I seem to remember a fairly constant attachment to her hard brown hand. . . . At night when it was suddenly too dark to breathe, I remember being lifted out of my bed and cuddling down with the greatest relief and comfort into a warm bosom.” (Spencer 36)
Wang Amah was Pearl’s nanny during her childhood and while Pearl’s mother was sick. Wang told
her
Buddhist and Taoist stories, which Pearl loved. She would play with
Edgar and Pearl in the garden, take them around the village and fix them
meals. When the children were scolded, Wang Amah and the other Chinese
neighbors would do the work and give the children candy. Wang Amah
also went with the family when they moved to Chinkiang and Kuling in the
summer to escape the tropical diseases (Buck 11).
Pearl’s schooling in China was emphasized by her mother’s efforts to make her read and write. As a young child Buck read the Bible, Plutarch’s Lives and Charles Dickens. Caroline Sydenstricker made Pearl work constantly on grammar, clarity, revision and improvement in her writing. She wanted Pearl’s works to be published. Later, Pearl’s childhood writings were published in the magazine Shanghai Mercury (Doyle 114).
In 1900, Pearl
received her first taste of Chinese revolts. She, her mother, and
her younger sister had to flee the Boxer Rebellion. The white missionaries
were being killed and it was no longer safe for them to be in the country.
They fled to a United States military boat, on which they sailed
to Shanghai and spent the year. This was not Buck’s only encounter
with the angry Chinese; in 1926 she and her family had to hide when Chiang
Kai-shek’s forces attacked Nanking (Doyle 114).
One of the most exciting times in Pearl’s childhood was when she returned to the United States at age nine. For Pearl it was a dream come true. Pearl spent the year in America. She lived in a house in Lexington, Virginia and received a tour of her homeland, including visits to her birthplace. Pearl learned about life in America, the Civil War, the work, the landscape and the style of living. Pearl joined school in the third grade and finished the highest in her class. This pleased her mother and to this satisfaction the family returned to China, where Pearl lived till she returned to the United States in 1910 (Spencer 58).
Pearl
S. Buck’s young life was spent in the countryside of China. Her childhood
was much 
different
from other American children her own age. She grew up under Chinese
influence with American parents during a time of political and social change
in China. These influences and experiences are reflected in many of her
books, which include her knowledge, and experience of Chinese life as a
child.