Buck lived the isolated life of a missionary wife in rural China. She scolded the Chinese for venerating their ancestors and for other “sins.” In letters to friends and family, she complained of her “constant contact with the terrible degradation and wickedness of a heathen people.” The Chinese, she pronounced in one missive, “are all thieves.” She condemned the infanticide that many women practiced. She pronounced herself unwilling, in a letter to her brother, “to have China considered as even a semi-civilized country.… She is a country given to the devil.”
