I read Cp.17–Cp.20, the last four capitals, of the book: “Dragon Seed”. Written by Pearl S. Buck.
1) (A) Cp. 17 
She avoided Pansiao for days, and she urging her away from the docile pattern of the days. “I was never meant to be a school teacher,” she thought.  But where could she go?
........ “I shall have to do something,” Miss Freem thought. “Let me find a way to get rid of her.”    Miss Freem said to the other teachers. “She was urging the girls to run away. She was saying ‘We ought fighting our own war.’ I said, ‘Miss Wei, I consider that your contract is broken.’”  
She felt as free as a wind-cloud. But out of the freedom her mind was shaping its plan. Why should she not go and see for herself if that brother was as handsome as Pansiao had said he was?         She plotted how she would get near enough to this man.    Pansiao had told her of Wu Lien, who was working with the enemy in the city.       She could write to the puppet ruler in that city of her mother’s birth, and ask merely that she be allowed to come there with his safeguard so that she can visit her mother’s birthplace and her grave.   The puppet had been her father’s friend once, and she had known him.   After she was in the puppet’s house, she can easily have him find for her that brother-in-law Wu Lien.   
Mayli sent by telegraph her massage to the puppet.  Within a few hours there was his massage back, begging her to come. He himself would give her protection.   She took the train and found the place prepared for her.  
They spoke in the English. “I am not a traitor. I am a realist.”   Someone had come into the room. “Ah, Wu Lien,” he said, and to Mayli he said,  “this is my secretary.”    Then Wu Lien said to his master:  “Sir, there is a bad news.”   “Take my guest to her room,” her host said. 
When she was alone with Wu Lien she said, “Is it possible to go about the city tomorrow?”    “I hope to go and visit my mother’s grave.”    He nodded. “I will see whether I cannot go with you myself.”   
Her host understood too her wish to visit her mother’s grave and he was eager to help her remember the name of the village,  Wu Lien said: “ Let me send for my wife, for she grew up in this countryside and her family still lives here.”    So without effort Mayli saw Wu Lien’s wife come in, and she knew at once that was a sister to Pansiao, for the two looked alike.      Thus simply was the thing done, by Heaven’s will.
(B) I think:    In this chapter, the puppet told Mayli that he was not a traitor. In the previous chapters, it was mentioned that Wu Lian was working for the Japanese, and he did not consider himself a traitor either. When the Japanese came, Ling Tan organized everyone to welcome them because he felt that the previous ruler was not good. The reason why they later fought against the Japanese was that the Japanese rule was even worse than before. 
During the Cultural Revolution in China, Chairman Liu Shaoqi was called a major traitor. One of the cadres in my workplace was originally a Communist Party member. Before the liberation of Beijing, he was arrested by the Kuomintang, but surrendered to avoid being shot. During the Cultural Revolution, everyone called him a traitor and subjected him to criticism and struggle sessions.
What exactly is a traitor and what is patriotism?
Einstein was originally German. During World War II, he became an American citizen and helped the United States fight against Germany. At that time, he was regarded as a traitor by the Germans. However, after the war, the German people realized that he was right and built a memorial hall for him.
In present-day China, anyone who says the Communist Party is bad is regarded as unpatriotic, equating patriotism with love for the Party.In present-day China, anyone who says the Communist Party is bad is regarded as unpatriotic, equating patriotism with love for the Party.
I love the hardworking Chinese people and the fine traditional Chinese culture. But I hate the autocratic rule and political persecution of the Communist Party!
Benjamin Franklin of the United States was one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence. He said, "Where there is freedom, there is my motherland."
I think:    In this chapter, the puppet told Mayli that he was not a traitor. In the previous chapters, it was mentioned that Wu Lian was working for the Japanese, and he did not consider himself a traitor either. When the Japanese came, Ling Tan organized everyone to welcome them because he felt that the previous ruler was not good. The reason why they later fought against the Japanese was that the Japanese rule was even worse than before. 
During the Cultural Revolution in China, Chairman Liu Shaoqi was called a major traitor. One of the cadres in my workplace was originally a Communist Party member. Before the liberation of Beijing, he was arrested by the Kuomintang, but surrendered to avoid being shot. During the Cultural Revolution, everyone called him a traitor and subjected him to criticism and struggle sessions.
What exactly is a traitor and what is patriotism?
Einstein was originally German. During World War II, he became an American citizen and helped the United States fight against Germany. At that time, he was regarded as a traitor by the Germans. However, after the war, the German people realized that he was right and built a memorial hall for him.
In present-day China, anyone who says the Communist Party is bad is regarded as unpatriotic, equating patriotism with love for the Party.In present-day China, anyone who says the Communist Party is bad is regarded as unpatriotic, equating patriotism with love for the Party.
I love the hardworking Chinese people and the fine traditional Chinese culture. But I hate the autocratic rule and political persecution of the Communist Party!
Benjamin Franklin of the United States was one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence. He said, "Where there is freedom, there is my motherland."

2) (A) Cp.18  Ling Tan’s two sons lay sleeping in his house and the third son had a small wound, in his arm, so that he had to hold it bent .      Ling Tan watched all who come and went near him He was afraid lest his two sons be found and his third son slept boldly in another room.  
At this moment his eyes, lifted often to search the road, fell upon Wu Lien and his daughter coming near with their children.    When they had come near enough Ling Tan saw that they had a stranger with them, a woman young and tall.   His daughter said. “This is a friend and she is coming to look for her mother’s grave in the Mohammedan burial ground.”    
Now while he hesitated, he saw to his fright that third son of his come to the gate. And his sudden look of shame was so strong and Ling Tan’s dismay so great that Mayli laughed.     By now how shamed the third son was! He ran into the house.
 Ling Tan knew that Wu Lien promised he would not betray his sons. Now he could dare to ask them to come into his house.   Ling Tan said to his second son: “Tell your two brothers to come out, there and none here except friends.”   But that third son would not come out, he thought himself shamed, because she had laughed at him.     Ling Sao took her son by his ear and led him out.    
Mayli looked at him. And he thought, “I never dreamed to see a woman like this.”     And she thought, “He is exactly what Pansiao said he was.”   
“I must go on,” she told Wu Lien hastily. While she went, and Ling Tan and Ling Sao went to the door with her.   
Now when Ling Tan came back to his seat, he soon saw that his third son wanted to speak with him.     “Got her for my wife,” Lao San said. When Ling Tan heard this, in his astonishment his hand opened itself and his good tea bowl fell to the ground.          Now Ling Sao heard the noise and she came running in to see what was wrong.           He said. “It is this son of yours— he wants to swallow the sun and the moon. He thinks he made heaven and earth!”          “He says, ‘get her for my wife.’”             What her?” Ling Sao asked.    “What her?” Ling Tan repeated. “Why, that foreigner!”    “Not one of you knows what I am,” the third son said, “I am no child. I swear myself away from this house!”     They saw him walking swiftly down the road toward the hills.
Then Ling Tan sat down. How could he, a farmer make proposal for such a woman?     But Ling Sao thought her sons so good enough for any woman, she motioned to her daughter to come aside and the mother said: “Find out whether the woman is wed already,and if she is not — well, she could not find so much of a man to look at as my son.”   
...... Now Lao San had not gone so straight as he pretended.   
He turned west and went toward the Mohammedan burial ground.    There he saw the woman he now loved so suddenly and powerfully.    When he looked at the woman he wanted it was not simply lust that he felt. He wanted her in many ways to fill out his own being in its lacks.     He stood until she turned at last and with Wu Lien went toward Ling Tan’s house again, and he made his way to the hills.
 “Do you see” Jade asked her husband. “She is the goddess, your brother’s goddess.”   “How bring these two together?”
Mayli went straight to her own rooms when she returned to the puppet place.   This morning had made her bold heart strangely soft.   Her mother had died when she was born.   Her father had told her through her childhood of her mother, and she knew the love between them.     
Upon her softened heart was now imprinted a young man’s face.   She remembered every look of his face.   
When she went down to meet her host at dinner he found her silent.   He said. “I have been told that I must catch the leader of those men who murdered the whole garrison yesterday. How can I do it?”   “How can you?” she repeated coldly. She saw within her heart that bold young face. “You cannot,” she said.
....... Thus its own way Heaven moves toward its end.    Mayli went back to Ling Tan’s house.     She would ask for Jade and tell Jade that she knew Pansiao and see what came of it.    She hired an old horse carriage and there she went.   
Only two women talking. Jade and Mayli,  and Mayli said: “I know your husband’s sister Pansiao, and I taught her for a while.”  “Did she show you a certain letter that I wrote her?” Jade asked.    “I saw the letter,” Mayli said clearly.    “He loved you when he first saw you,” Jade said.    “What shall I tell him?”Jade asked.     Then Mayli took out a small piece of bright silk, and Jade saw the flag of the free people. Mayli put it in Jade’s hands.  “Tell him I go to the free lands,” she said to Jade. “Tell him that I go to Kumming.”
(B) I think: Mayli and the third son fell in love with each other as soon as they met, just as an old Chinese saying goes: “A thousand miles of marriage  is linked by a single thread.”

3) (A)  Cp. 19      
After Mayli had gone Jade sat for a long time idle.  “All that I do is to sit here and bear children,” she thought half sadly, and in her bosom the free flag seemed to burn.   
When the others came home at noon, she told it with pleasure.  And they looked at the flag Jade had.   “Did she mean my son was to go after her?” Ling Sao asked.      “She is woman enough to have our son swear he will have her and no other,” Ling Tan said.     “Let him go where he will as long as he fights the enemy.”    “As for you,” Ling Tan said to Lao Er,  “take the message to your younger brother, let him do what he likes.”
The bitterness of the enemy’s rule did not abate.     Up the river guns could be smuggled to the army in the free land, if money were given to the many outstretched enemy hands.     Such rottenness in the enemy everywhere meant that one day they would rotter enough to be overthrown.
Jade said to her husband: “If we had stayed in the free land, would we not have done something great, too?”    “To me, we do the bravest things,” he said, “—to do as my younger brother does, is to get glory very easily. But this is our way of making war—to stay, and to take no suffering as cause to leave. In this there is no glory.” “What does it matter if there is glory, so long as we hold the land?”
......The eldest son stayed in the hills doing his simple duty, and he laid his traps here and there and caught an enemy of two a few times a month.   When his second brother came and told their younger brother what the woman had said, that one made great noise to get himself ready to go to the free land.    He said: “Do you want to go with me, my brother, to the free land?”    “Since what I do best is to lay my trips,”Lao Tan said, “what good can I be there, where there is no enemy?”
He thought of his little dead children and of Orchid.   He knew he was ready to begin a life for himself and he wanted a wife and children again.   
One day he happened to find a woman.   He had chanced to lay a trap on a new road.   When he opened that trip the next day to see what lay in it, he found a sobbing woman.   He saw she was no enemy.   He got her up.   
Then she said: “My man was killed by enemy and I was to find his village and his father and mother, and see if they would care for me.”     Then she named a village of which he had never heard.  
He thought, “ Has not Heaven sent her? She fell into my trap.”   He said to her: “ My own father’s house is not far from here and my mother is a good woman, so let me take you there.” 
When they were within sight of the village, he said to the woman: “ I have lost my wife and my two children. You have lost your husband. Are we not two part? If we come together would we not be a whole?”     She said, “If you will have me!”
They came to his father’s house.    For early that morning Jade’s child had begun to come. The child for some reason clung to the womb and would not come out.   At this moment Ling Sao beheld her eldest son come in with a strange woman. As soon as he saw his mother: “Mother, this woman is your new daughter-in-law.”   
Now this new woman had lived long enough to know what was best for herself, thank the times for giving her a chance for a man as strong as this one, though he was ten years younger than she.      She said: “I have often delivered women of their children and it may be that I can be of use here.” 
“Come with me,” Ling Sao cried. She took the woman to Jade’s beside.     That woman knead Jade’s belly and her loins, and cried out: “I feel a boy’s head!”    After about two hours more, he was born. Then Ling Sao seized the child.    But the woman cried, “ There is another one.”   And then she fell hard to work again and in a few moments more another child was born.
When Ling Sao took food to the woman she asked her age in all courtesy, and that woman said half sadly, “Well I know I am too old. I am thirty-six.”  Ling Sao said: “Have you any children?”    At that the woman began to weep and she said, “I d have children, but I lost them all—five of them together in battle from the flying ships.   Then my husband lost himself in a soldier’s battle.”
(B）I think:  The eldest son married the woman who fell into the trap. Fate brings them together no matter how far apart they are.

4) (A)  Cp. 20
Thus Ling Tan’s house was full again, and with yet no abatement of hardship from the enemy’s rule, his life went on.  
Opium lamps and pipes were sold openly on the street.   All the factories for making of silk were in enemy hands, and flour belonged to the enemy still.
Ling Tan thought bitterly. “If I had so much as a seed of hope,” he said, “If I saw an end, however far away, that one day we could rise up! But all we do was is to endure, and can victory be won only by endurance?”
In the late summer of that year, it began on his birthday. He had looked forward to this his sixtieth birthday.   His third son was far in the free land, and his eldest son in and out of the hills.    Ling Tan saw his birthday coming near and they had not even so much as a piece of meat in the house.    Ling Tan felt his life was too much for him.      “If there were a little hope somewhere in the sky,” he told his second son. “But there is none who will help us.”
Ling Sao grew frightened and she called her second son and said: “You must think of some way to put hope into your father.”   
Lao Er thought of his old cousin. He knew him to be alive. And Lao Er thought, “I will go to the old bone, and see if he has any good to tell.”  “I will ask my father to go with me.”       Ling Tan said: “I will go with you.”
They went into the inner room. There after a while the old cousin came and he said: “I told you yesterday about that meeting between the two great white men. The one came from the country of Mei and the other from Ying.  Today the one from Ying has spoken.”         He lifted up the paper and read these words aloud: “The ordeals of the conquered people will be hard. We must give them hope. We must give them the conviction that their sufferings and their resistances will not be in vain.”
“If those peoples are against this enemy,” Ling Tan said, “are they not with us?”   “Are they not?” others echoed joyfully.
Then out of his long weariness Ling Tan felt the slow tears come up into his eyes. “ Let us go,” he said to his son. 
Lao Er let his father walk ahead of him and he saw him lift his head to look at the stars.
 (B) I think : Pearl S. Buck's “ Dragon Seed” promoted American support for China's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.