The Good Earth ~ch 15

Pg 124

"They talked, these men, always and forever of money... every day the talk ended with this: 'And if I had the gold that he has and the silver in my hand that he wears every day in his girdle and if I had the pearls his concubines wear and the rubies his wife wears...' And listening to all these things they would do if they had these things, Wang Lung heard only of how much they would eat and sleep, and of what dainties they would eat that they had never yet tasted, and of how they would gamble in this great tea shop and in that, and of what pretty women they would buy for their lust, and above all, how none would ever work again, even as the rich man behind the wall never worked. Then Wang Lung cried out suddenly, ' If I had the gold and the silver and the jewels, I would buy land with it, good land, and I would bring forth harvests from the land!' At this they united in turning on him and in rebuking him..."

Wang Lung and his family traveled south in order to avoid starvation and found that the people in this region are very different from themselves. Wang Lung is willing to work. He is eager to get back to his land so that he could work. His entire purpose for working and begging to raise money in this place is in order to travel back north, buy an ox, some seeds, and other necessities for farming so that he could work on his own land again. However, on the other hand, the men who are living with the rich people and beg them for money are very much similar to them. They have the same desires, just not the money. These men believe that to be rich means that you do not have to work. They think that anyone who works is in a lower class than those who don't. In their dreams, working is not even an option. Both sides think the other is a fool for wanting to spend the money on such things, and that they are "more worthy to have the riches" (pg 124).

This shows the cultural and background differences between the two people from two regions, in the same country. It describes the dissimilarities between the factors that motivate the men to beg on the dirty streets and to haul those heavy carts, doing the jobs that are meant for the lowly.