1. As the story opens, spring is approaching in what was once a highly productive part of southern China.
The elderly peasant Dung Bao laments that nothingāChina's political and economic stability, his family's
fortunes, the local power structure, the farmland, the crops, the canal, even the spring weather itselfāis how
it used to be. It is not a season of renewal, for everything seems to be in decline. Foreigners, both Western
and Japanese, dominate the country economically and rival moneylenders and pawnbrokers in exploiting the
peasants. To his despair, the efforts of the new Nationalist government to rid China of the foreigners seem
ineffective, and the recent fighting with the Japanese in Shanghai has left the silk-weaving factories there idle,
a situation that will have a negative impact on him and the other peasants who raise silkworms for income.
Heavily in debt after losing his rice fields and with his winter food supplies nearly gone, Dung Bao hopes that a
good crop of silkworms will wipe out his debts and give his family enough to live on.
Dung Bao has two sons. A Su, the elder, is much like his father, tradition bound, dutiful, and
superstitious, and he believes that the family's precarious state is their fate and that little can be done about
it. The younger, A Duo, believes that nothing will change unless people change first. He is cheerful, outgoing,
and even rebellious, and he lends a helping hand to any hardworking village woman, with some of whom he
also flirts. Dung Bao quarrels with those in the village who want to use better-quality foreign, presumably
Japanese, eggs rather than Chinese eggs for hatching silkworms. Because of his hatred of foreigners, he
patriotically resists buying foreign eggs. He borrows money from relatives not only for Chinese eggs but also
for the mulberry leaves to feed the silkworms after they have hatched and as they weave their cocoons.
Then begins the exacting, highly work-intensive, almost ritual-istic preparation of the eggs for hatching
and for feeding and nurturing the silkworms. During this two-week period no one gets much to eat, for all of
the money is spent on additional mulberry leaves for the ever-hungry silkworms. Keeping a day-and-night
watch on the silkworms' food and warmth, everybody becomes sleep-deprived, stressed, and prone to
quarrels. Because Lotus, the flirtatious young wife of an old neighbor, seems to have made careless errors in
her early preparations, her silkworm harvest is ruined. Consequently, she is considered unlucky and is
ostracized from the community. One night while the younger son is keeping watch, he discovers that the
angry, resentful Lotus has stolen some of his family's silkworms and thrown them into the stream. In spite of
her mean-spirited behavior, he allows her to leave and tells no one. Seeing the two together, neighbors
assume that they are having an affair and that the silkworm crop has been jinxed. The news quickly reaches
Dung Bao. Unconvinced by his son's denials, the old man carefully inspects the silkworm room for signs of ill
omens, and though finding none, he is still full of misgivings about the future.
Dung Bao's silkworm harvest, like that of everyone else's in the village, is prodigious, the best he has
seen in decades, with more than 500 pounds of cocoons. Just as everyone is about to celebrate this fortuitous
event, however, news comes that because of the war none of the silk-weaving factories in the immediate area
will be open for the season. To sell their crop, the peasants must travel five days to distant factories. With no
other options available, the two sons set out. When they return, Dung Bao learns that because of the market
glut the prices were low. Moreover, his cocoons, from Chinese rather than foreign eggs, brought an even
lower price. In short, he and his fellow villagers, for all their Herculean efforts, have not sold enough even to
cover their expenses. In fact, as tax collectors and moneylenders invade the village to demand payment, they
are worse off than when they started.
