Han Tran’s Reviews > Dragon Seed > Status Update

Lao San has found his wife, while Lao Ta has found another wife to wed after Orchid has died. Lao Er and Jade have birthed their second child, only to find that they are twins. Ling Tan's family life has gone back to normal, save for the strict enemy taxes and laws.

"And so the first moment Ling Tan's son put his eyes on here she was laughing and the sunlight fell on her and he saw her like this, her hair shining black and her cheeks red and her lips red and her teeth white and her head thrown back in laughter, and he was struck as though a sword had fallen across his heart. By now how shamed he was!"

"They were all staring at her now, at her color, at her height, at her ease, at her quick foreign movements and at the foreign stuff of her gown. Yet she was one of them, for her hair was black and her skin, though fair, was still their skin. Pansiao was dazed with her beauty... Pansiao thought, 'Heaven has sent me one for my brother!'"

The white woman who had originally housed the women and children refugees has committed suicide in front of an altar, and Ling Tan was looking for her to find where Pansiao was attending school.

"But within himself Wu Lien kept all that he knew, and he was careful never to let anything in his manner or his voice or his look betray that he had any special knowledge. Yet he did have, for to him came ten or twelve men and women who told him news of every kind and were his ears and eyes everywhere... He was stuffed with knowledge he seemed never to use."

Jade disguised herself as an old woman bringing cabbages to the city to sell. On the way there, a soldier sees the basket and tells her to cook the cabbages for the soldiers staying in an inn. As she is taken into the kitchens, she meets another cook who is not a collaborator. She comes with the plan to poison the food of the soldiers and goes through with it.

"Ling Tan knew that women are more able to kill and do hard deeds than men are. They shed their blood every month, and they pour it out when they give birth, and so they are not afraid of blood. But when a man's blood flows, he knows his life goes out with it, and so he is more squeamish than a woman is and to learn to shed blood easily moves him and stir his being and changes him."

"He had once been so soft at heart that he did not want to see fowls killed and Ling Sao had always to wring their necks behind the house where he could not see. 'I do not like to kill,' he thought now, 'and even today I would not kill for pleasure. But how is it I am able to kill at all?'"

Lao Er and Jade arrives at the family home at night, while Ling Tan and Ling Sao were expecting soldiers. Jade has her son hidden in a basket and disguised as a man so as she would not be raped and murdered. Ling Sao is ecstatic to finally see her grandson, as does Ling Tan. While they were away, the elderly couple had been digging a hole behind the stove to hide Jade and her son and the salted foods.

As Orchid has been raped and murdered by the soldiers, Ling Tan and his eldest son and wife have come back to their home, albeit empty and all their possessions broken or stolen. As an envelope arrives for the family, there is a red cord inside. The envelope was sent from Lao Er and Jade, signifying that their son has been born.