- Wang Lung asks Lotus about finding a wife for his first son, and she knows just the guy to ask: that grain dealer who stopped seeing her because she was a little bit too much like his daughter.
- Perfect. Before Wang Lung knows it, Lotus and Cuckoo are all ready to put the plan into action. But Wang Lung still drags his feet, and he probably would have taken forever to get it done if his older son hadn't come home late, vomiting, after seeing a prostitute one night.
- Things move pretty quickly after that. Wang Lung gets the prostitute to turn his son away, and he lets Cuckoo set up the engagement.
- Then Wang Lung starts wailing on his uncle, since it's his son that led Wang Lung's son to the prostitute. But it looks like the uncle has something up his sleeve: he's in a vicious, infamous, marauding gang. Well, that's just wonderful. All these years when other people were getting looted, it was Wang Lung's uncle who guaranteed his safety.
- It's all a little bit too much for Wang Lung, so he goes out into the farm for some therapy. But hey, what's that on the horizon? Oh, right: a plague of locusts. That's enough to take Wang Lung's mind off of his problems.
- Once the locusts are gone, everything is more or less back to normal.