I read the Cp.7–Cp.9 of the book “Dragon Seed” , written by Pearl S. Buck.
A) (1) Cp.7
That night Ling Sao looked at the white woman. “ Come with me and I will show you where your daughters are,” the woman said.    Then they came to a great house, and into a hall which was full of people.      Ling Sao found Orchid and her two daughters and all other children.    
Pansiao was lying awake and sobbing.  Ling Sao whispered.  “ Are you all unharmed here?”  “We are thus far,” the girl replied, “ they feed us here.”   And then she asked, “ Where is your children’s father?”   Her daughter replied,  “ He was going back to the shop, he would leave us here until he saw what the pattern of the city to be.”  Orchid woke and saw Ling Sao. “ Are you here too,my mother?” she cried. “ What happened there after we left?”
When the sun was well up there were serving women who brought rice in great buckets and vegetables.   The women told Ling Sao to eat with others. “Eat,” they said, “for by eating you do a good deed yourself when you help our foreign mistress into heaven.”
Outside of the great house full of the women. And many spoke to Ling Sao. She heard such things as had never gone into her ears before.    Many in the city had hoped for the quick coming of the enemy, so that there could be peace. The enemy had come like wild beasts, no, and worse. They killed only the men and took the women. Weather a woman was old or young was nothing.   Many of the women who talked to Ling Sao had seen those of their own blood killed before their eyes, or raped or beaten.
Thus night fell, and there beside Ling Sao were the seven courtesans. “ Why are you here?” She asked that young woman somewhat angrily. “Women like you ought not be here.”   The young woman smiled sadly. “Even we are women,” she said quietly, “ and we fear beasts, too.”
Ling Sao asked the young courtesan. “Are you from Soochow? Then why are you in this city?”   “We are in Soochow when it fell,” the young courtesan said, “and in our house there were twenty-three courtesans and of those there are only us left, and we are only seven. When we heard the white people could offer safe to women, we came too, for we hate this enemy.”
Deep in the middle of that night, they were all wakened out of their sleep by the noise of thundering upon the gate.  Every woman lay in the darkness, fearful of what was to come.
Then after a while there came that white woman. “I have bad news,” she said. “The enemy is at the gate. I have only the power of my country to hold them back. They say they will not come in if we gave to them a few women.”
This she said, and all of them were silent. Each woman said in her bosom, “It can’t be I.”   Then Ling Sao saw that which she was never forget so long as she lived. For at her side that beautiful woman rose. “Come, my little sisters, we must go back to our work.”  
“God give you blessing,” that white woman said.  In the room they had left there was darkness and not a woman spoke. And the next dawn came as it always had.

(2)  Cp.8 
In his shop Wu Lian worked.  He wrote in large black letters upon the outer walls of his shop there words. “East-Ocean Goods Sold Here.”   For the first time since the students had spoiled his shop he felt comfortable.    He thought, “is it to love one’s country when one destroys honest good in a shop? Is that the way for men of reason to behave toward each other?”        He had not made up his mind to bring his wife here, for he could not close his eyes to all the dead who lay on the street, nor could keep him from hearing screams which told him that a woman was suffering.     
It was not too long after he had put up his sign that four enemy soldiers came by, one of them a small officer, they came to find if he had any food to sell.  All that Wu Lian had was some small fish put into little tin boxes.   “Ah!” the officer said, “ you do not hate us?”   Wu Lien smiled, “I hate no one,” he said.
The officer waved his hand to the street.  “ For all this—we are so sorry. Our soldiers, very brave—angry.”  “I know how soldiers are,” Wu Lian said. “ But now— let hope for peace. Only in peace can we do business.”     “Oh, we promise!” the officer said,  “If many are like you.”     
The officer wrote some bold black letters, he wrote his name and where he lived in this city, and then he gave the paper to Wu Lian.  “If any come here to trouble you, show them the paper,” he said. “We will do no harm to those who do not resist us.”    After they were gone. “ I have only not to resist,” Wu Lien thought, “that is easy enough for me .”
When in the afternoon of the same day a soldier brought to his door a box and in it folded an enemy flag and attached to it a piece of cloth with some letters on it.  Wu Lien put up the sign upon the lintel of his door.  Yet while he did this he heard a girl scream. “ That soldier,” he thought, “ who just now brought me this sign, can it be he?” 
At sundown when it was time to put up the boards for night he looked up to take down the sign first. That sign was gone.  
He stared at it and grew afraid. Was there a student near him?

....In his own house Ling Tan and his sons themselves made a coffin for Wu Lian’s mother.  And buried Wu Sao.
 Except for this household, all the others were spoiled as Ling Tan’s had been.  Out of that village of less than a hundred souls, seven young girls were dead, and four women were despoiled.   Among the dead, too, was the oldest man.
There was another evil to fall upon Ling Tan, and it happened to his youngest son.   One day Ling Tan looked up and there at his door stood four enemy soldiers, and his sons were at the loom.  Ling Tan went to the door and threw the door open, and the sunset light fell upon the hot faces of four young men.  They shouted at him and he saw that what they wanted was women.  
These men ran toward the weaving room. When those furious soldiers saw that indeed there was no woman their lust knew no bounds.   Ling Tan saw them lay hold upon his youngest son. They took this boy and used him as a woman.   The beautiful boy lay like dead on the ground.    Then, laughing, those soldiers went their way.
The lad was not dead, but he was like one dead.  “I cannot stay here,” he gasped.    “You shall not stay here,” Ling Tan soothed him. “ If you go to the hills, do not join the evil men who rob our own people.Seek out the good hill men who make war only on the enemy.”

(3) Cp.9
Now Wu Lien saw if he were to have safety from his own enemies he must have his protection from the enemy who had the city in their power.  So he went to the street and the number which the officer had left with him.  He knocked upon a close door. The door was opened by a soldier.  Wu Lien went behind him into the house and there were four enemy officers drinking together. 
He spoke to the one he knew.  “I have a long dealt in foreign goods , which have come from your country. There are those in this city who call me traitor, and they have it in their purpose to kill me, and so I am come to ask if any way that I can be safe.”     “We shall set up a people’s government here,” the officer said. “You may move into this house at once. Your wage will be fixed according to your ability.”   “But I have a wife—my old mother—and two children,” Wu Lien said.  “They may all be here,” the officer said. “You see how merciful we are to those who do not resist us. We seek nothing but peace and the good of all.”
 Great was his joy that next day Wu Lien and with a guide of two enemy soldiers he went toward the place where his wife was in the white woman’s compound.    He beat on the gate and the gateman’s old face peered out he had to say, “ I am Wu Lien, and I am come for my household.”    The gateman stared at the two enemy soldiers. “How is it you have these two with you?” he asked.  Wu Lien said, “ These two have been told off to protect me.”     “I cannot bring them in,” the gateman retorted. “I must first ask the white woman.”
The white women said To Wu Lien: “Are you not a traitor? Have you not seen what has taken place in the city?”   Wu Lien answered,  “I say the sooner we forget such things, the sooner peace will come for us all.”    Then this woman said,  “ I see you are a traitor and the sooner you have your household out of these walls, the better it is.”   
In a few moments Wu Lien saw his wife coming and with them her children and then Ling Sao.   Ling Sao said,  “ I must tell you, your old mother is no more.”   
Wu Lien settling his household in the carriage.Then in haste he made off and Ling Sao was left there with the white woman.  The woman said: “I am sorry for you.” The gateman said: “your daughter’s husband has gone over to be a running dog of the enemy.”  
Ling Sao walked back into the hall where Orchid was and told everything to her little daughter and to Orchid.  There was restless all through that hall when the women heard that one of them had gone home.  And they thought,  “It will be my turn next if my man has the wits for it.”   
Nor were things bettered by a letter that from Ling Sao’s elder daughter boasting of the fine rooms she had, and then Ling Sao said: “I do think this enemy is better than we thought, and the city is now very safe and peaceful.”  She had find a teacher to read it to her.   But the one said, “I would not put too much faith in it.”
 When Orchid heard how well her sister-in-law did, she thought: “ The city is at peace again why can I not steal out of the gate.”   She went to the gate and she drew the bar softly and she stepped into the street and there were few people about.   As she passed a public water closet for men, she was suddenly fallen upon by five enemy soldiers.   When they saw Orchid they thought she must be a courtesan and quarreled for who should have her first.   She was like a rabbit fallen upon by wolffish dogs, and then her life went out.  When they were through with her they left her there and she dead.
Then only did the few pitying passers-by dare to come in, and one said: “Let us take it to the white woman.”
When white woman saw what happened her pale face grew yet more stern. “You did well to bring her here,” she told them all. When they were gone, she went to find Ling Sao, she told her what had happened. Ling Sao wept, “Oh, send for my husband and  my son somehow. It is so piteous.”     “I have seen too much sorrow,” that white woman said. “I have given myself to God. God wants you,too, It may be that He has brought this sorrow upon you to soften your heart to bring you to Him.”  
Ling Sao waited to see if Ling Tan and their son would come. Outside in the cold darkness stood two men she watched for.  She sobbing and crying. “Oh, my man— Oh my son.”  
Ling Sao would go back with Ling Tan.  “ I go home with you,” she said to him.   “What of our little daughter?” he said. “Will you leave her here alone?”   “If you go,” the white woman said, “leave your daughter with me. We had in good times a girls’ school here, but now the school is moved. It happens that tomorrow others go on a foreign ship and guarded by two of my countrymen and their wives, and she will be safe.”  Ling Tan spoke.  “Let it be as you say—only tell us sometimes if she still lives.”   
Ling Sao found comfort because she was going home.  Ling Sao run into her own gate.  “Where is all my had?” she cried.   “I used to have the best house, the best of everything, and now I have nothing.”
Ling Tan cursed the war. “Curse all these men who come into the world to upset it with wars!”  And he told her that night when their third son had gone away.   “At least he lives,” she said.   
There was a day long enough after Ling Sao had come home to ruin, when there passed through the village one left in Ling Tan’s hand a letter.   When he unfolded the paper inside the envelope a braided card of scarlet silk fell out into his hand.  This red card told was that somewhere to Lao Er and to Jade a living son was born.

B) I think:
（1） The book mentions that the courtesan and some people thought the original ruler was very bad and harmed the people, hoping that the Japanese would come soon, believing that once they arrived, they would be safe. However, the Japanese came and the situation became even worse. Orchid naively thought she was safe and walked out of the shelter's gate, only to be killed. For a long time, the Chinese people were under feudal autocratic rule and were in a position of enslavement, submitting passively and merely hoping for a better ruler. Even now, there is still no sense of being the master, and no concepts of democracy, freedom and the rule of law.
(2) In that tragic era, we could still see the noble virtues of some people. That courtesan stepped forward and took the initiative to relieve the disaster for other women. For instance, that white woman took in many Chinese women and children. Such as passers-by returning the body of Orchid to the shelter for white women, etc
(3) The book mentions that the Japanese bribed Wu Lien, and Wu Lien also decided to side with the Japanese to seek his own safety. Even though so many people around were killed and raped, and although his mother was also killed by the Japanese. An autocratic regime needs to bribe some people to maintain its rule. In modern times, it is the same. The government cultivates some military, police and scholars to suppress the masses and control the words and deeds of the general public.