The good earth takes place in china and it acquires events that actually happened to occur and help carry along the plot. Despite some fictional things in the book three important events which are the revolution, the china flood of 1931, and the second sino-Japanese war were all real events that took place. These events create the reasoning behind the story that took place.
In the story, Wang and his family here that there is talk of a war and recruiting. On page 139 they are raiding a rich house, this is the mob that is mentality getting to them. This occurs when the poor go against the rich and it shows that the revolution is taking place.
The second sino-japenese war is brought up towards the end of the book when Wang's uncles son on page 301 is enlisting in the war. Later On in the book, when wangs uncles son is passing through with his troops they forcibly stay in Wang's house.
The china flood of 1931 was a disaster flood that destroyed everything such as crops and it also created famine. this is in the part of the book that starts on page 167 when his land had become drowned under water. He still had some land that wasn't drenched and above ground so he was not worried about the piece of land that was soaked. The flood didn't harm him because he had enough goods to last him.
These events did occur in the book, they were just not easily brought to attention. all of these different events caused things to happen throughout the plot in this book.