teacher who once failed the country examination. Great Tea Shop in Town: It is a newly opened teashop whose owner is a man from the south. Wang Lung begins to frequent the place when he becomes idle as a result of not having any work to do on the land. At the teashop, Wang Lung meets Cuckoo who has become the keeper of the shop, and eventually Lotus who is one of the many beautiful girls working there. Redbeards: This is the dangerous bandit group to which Wang Lung's uncle belongs. The men in this group roam around the northern countryside, destroying homes and killing people. Locusts : One year, the sky turns black and a great roar fills the air as locusts fall from the sky to destroy the fields. Wang Lung and his laborers work furiously to destroy these insects, and succeed in saving the best of Wang Lung's fields. Opium : When Wang Lung goes to the great House of Hwang to get O-lan, he sees the Old Mistress smoking opium. Later, in order to make his uncle and his uncle's wife powerless and 'undesiring,' he and his son devise a plan to give as much opium as possible to the couple. Wang Lung's uncle and his wife become haggard and sick as a result of excessive opium use....
