How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Now that there are the three generations in this house, we should have the tablets of ancestors that great families have, and we should set the tablets up to be worshipped at the feast days for we are an established family now.” This pleased Wang Lung greatly, and so he ordered it and so it was carried out, and there in the great hall the row of tablets was set up, his grandfather's name on one and then his father's, and the spaces left empty for Wang Lung's name and his son's when they should die. And Wang Lung's son bought an incense urn and set it before the tablets. (29.57)
Death is not the end of a person's life in Chinese traditional culture. Just as Wang Lung had to respect his father during his life, now that he can afford ancestral tablets, he has to worship his father in death, too. Grandpa is still part of the family, and he still needs to eat and drink (symbolically); he's just a little different now.
Quote #8
And then, on his way back, as if the gods cannot bear to give freely and not hide sting somewhere in the gift one came running from the harvest fields to tell him that Ching lay dying suddenly and had asked if Wang Lung would come to see him die. (29.60)
Almost every time there's a birth in this novel, it's followed by a death. It's like they come in pairs. It's another way in which Buck emphasis the cycle of life.
Quote #9
Then Wang Lung moved his uncle's wife into the town where she would not be alone, and he gave her a room at the end of a far court for her own, and he told Cuckoo to supervise a slave in the care of her, and the old woman sucked her opium pipe and lay on her bed in great content, sleeping day after day, and her coffin was beside her where she could see it for her comfort. (30.185)
Why do you think that it's comforting for Wang Lung's aunt to see her coffin in her room every day? Does it remind her that she'll be okay and taken care of after death? That she won't be putting her family out too much when she dies, since the preparations have already been made? Would this kind of thing be scary in most Western cultures?