In january, 1931, Lossing and Pearl spent several weeks sailing south along the Chinese coast toward Hong Kong and Canton (Guangzhou). Lossing was trying to make arrangements for an expanded survey of agriculture, while Pearl was exploring parts of China she had not seen before. Several times, the Bucks nearly stepped into the fighting that swept back and forth across the countryside, devastating thousands of farms and keeping the peasants in a constant state of terror. Armed struggle had spread everywhere. Bandits were fighting Chiang Kaishek's Kuomintang troops and each other, the KMT was battling Communists as well as local warlords, Communists were harassing KMT soldiers at every opportunity and also attacking bandits and landlords. On more than one occasion, the armed men who fought and killed each other literally did not know who their enemies had been. The slide into luan, chaos, which the Chinese feared above all else, seemed to have become irreversible.

When the Bucks got back to Nanking, Lossing went immediately to the local dentist to have several bad teeth removed. His eyes were also giving him trouble, and his physical problems interfered with his work. Pearl was dismayed to find that Janice, who had stayed in Nanking with friends, had come down with a case of whooping cough.

Janice quickly recovered, but Pearl remained distraught about Carol. Though she confessed it to no one, she wished Carol would die, she even prayed for it. For one of the few times in her life, Pearl was immobilized by sorrow.