Wang Lung

When Wang Lung was offered the option of selling his land so that his family could have the money, he shrieked: "I shall never sell the land!" and expresses his love for the land, refusing to sell it to the southerners, to whom he said: "Bit by bit I will dig up the fields and feed the earth itself to the children and when they die, I will bury them in the land, and I and my wife and my old father, even he, we will die on the land that has given us birth." (92)

Wang Lung was furious when he discovered that his son "ran under an old woman's arm who had come to buy it and seized it and ran into an alley and hid" and although "it was the first time they had had flesh to eat since they killed their own ox,"(118) Wang Lung "himself would have none of it,"(119) showing that he was an honorable man who would not accept stealing.

Indignant that his cousin had spoiled his own son by bringing him to a prostitute, he went to his uncle and complained that "[he had] harbored an ungrateful nest of snakes and they have bitten him,"(245) and that he explained that they were to leave and cause no more trouble.