IT is the highest house in all of Zhenjiang, tucked behind bamboo above the Yangtze mist shrouding Cloud Scaling Hill. The former occupants lie buried on two continents: the parents nearby, their famous daughter beneath Pennsylvania farm soil in a grave marked with her Chinese name. She arrived in China as a child of missionaries. Now, steles resembling tombstones front her gray brick childhood home. In English, the epitaph reads, "Here lived Pearl S. Buck, American author, born 1892, died 1973." The more effusive carving in Chinese cites a Nobel Prize and the praise of a president: "Nixon called her a bridge between the civilizations of East and West."
The house is now a museum dedicated to Buck, the prodigal daughter of Zhenjiang, a city of more than two million upriver from Shanghai that smells like its famous vinegar. A joint venture between the city government and the United States-based Pearl S. Buck International foundation, the museum is filled with Buck memorabilia — calligraphied laurels from government agencies and photos of the writer doing "her utmost to appeal to American society for assistance to Chinese people" in the war against Japan. Souvenirs carry the verdict of a former prime minister, Zhou Enlai: "She is a friend of the Chinese people." Yet one thing is notably absent from the gift stand: Buck's books.
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