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THE RICE SPROUT SONG by Eileen Chang

THE RICE SPROUT SONG

By

Pub Date: April 4th, 1955
ISBN: 0520210883
Publisher: Scribner

A convincing novel of Chinese village life under the Communist banner comes to us from an author who reached Hong Kong from the mainland in 1952. Centering about a young couple who try hard to live up to Labor Model status but are ultimately held responsible with others for a brief revolt, it draws a picture of family and village as exploited by regime after regime. First the Nationalists took away Gold Has Got's husband; now the Communists demand pigs and produce from the nearly starved farmers for New Years' Day. Moon Scent returns from three years of working in Shanghai to find the village changed but her love for her husband Gold Root undiminished. Their reunion is brief -- for in the angry farmers' uprising Gold Root is shot, their child Beckon trampled to death and Moon Scent burned after setting fire to the Peoples' Granary. Stolid Comrade Wong, who cannot believe the people have turned of themselves, drives the ""reactionary"" couple to their dooms while the more sensitive Ky, an intellectual in search of film material, is horrified at Party barbarism, but not sufficiently so to turn from his opportunistic Party film story. Many strands well woven.