3 ideas
When drought and famine strike his Anhui village, Wang Lung refuses to sell his fields even as his family eats grass, bark and earth. He and O-Lan flee south to a walled city, where he pulls a rickshaw and they beg.
The novel argues that land keeps a family whole only while the family works it. Once Wang Lung's holdings let him hire laborers and move into town, idleness brings a concubine, domestic rivalry and sons who see the fields as sellable capital. The House of Hwang's decline is replayed in his own household, and the book ends with his sons quietly planning to sell the land while telling him they won't.
O-Lan, bought as a kitchen slave from the House of Hwang, gives birth alone and goes back to the fields the same day. She keeps the family alive through the famine and supplies the jewels that make its fortune. Wang Lung later takes the two pearls she asked to keep and gives them to his concubine Lotus. Her worth is acknowledged only as she is dying, which shows how a household can depend on labor it never counts as contribution.