How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #4
"Shall I never see it again! With all this labor and begging there is never enough to do more than feed us today.” Then out of the dusk there answered him a voice, a deep burly voice, “You are not the only one. There are a hundred hundred like you in this city." (13.29)
Okay, so first of all, that random voice is totally weird. But second of all, if Wang Lung actually got was the voice was telling him, he would be on his way to that Marx guy's political consciousness thing. Why do you think Wang Lung never gets there? We saw that sometimes people are just too poor to understand the way they're being exploited. They don't have time to think about it, and often they don't have the education, either. But, wait. Maybe the rich people are too rich to think about, too? Why would they bother thinking about it? Things are good for them, so what do they care who they're exploiting? Maybe Wang Lung never develops a political consciousness due to the fact that he's either too poor or too rich to figure it out.
Quote #5
"Now how ignorant you are, you who still wear your hair in a long tail! No one can make it rain when it will not, but what has this to do with us? If the rich would share with us what they have, rain or not would matter none, because we would all have money and food." (14.30)
Quote #6
"These soldiers are going to battle somewhere and they need carriers for their bedding and their guns and their ammunition and so they force laborers like you to do it. But what part are you from? It is no new sight in this city." (14.43)
Turn-of-the-century China was full of rebellions and wars with foreign countries, so this was probably pretty normal in a city with a port like this one. Since he lives all the way inland, and there's no 24-hours news channel (aside from the local gossips) for him to check, there's no reason for Wang Lung know about it.