As the stories unfold the main characters encounter conflicts. For Dantes it is being arrested at his betrothal feast on the grounds of treason and discretely having been a Bonapartist agent. Wang Lung soon comes upon a terrible drought and famine. His uncle's family, uninvited, moves in, eats the last of their rations and begs for all their money. Wang is then forced to take money from his neighbor and best friend, Ching, causing him to become poor also. Wang then hears of the riches of the south and takes his family and pregnant wife on a train there to beg in the streets and hold a job of renting a cart and pulling the wealthy around town for meager payments. Mutually Dantes and Lung escape from this time of suffering and return to society abroad. Edmond Dantes takes the identity of Sinbad the Sailor (Italy), The Count of Monte Cristo (France), Lord Wilmore, and Abbé Borocia after miraculously escaping from the Chateau d'If, a ghastly, horrifying prison for the worst of men by concealing himself in his friend's shrouds and cutting himself loose after being hurled into the sea. After swimming aboard a merchant vessel Edmond begins working for the captain on the ship and eventually plots to be purposefully left on the Isle of Monte Cristo where he discovers the treasure in Faria's legend. He then becomes rich, powerful and socially popular and revisits his devious traitors inside his native land. Wang Lung escapes poverty by taking his family back home where he uses his few silver coins to purchases seeds and cultivates his crops. Later Wang and his wife, O-lan, harvest their land and find that they are wealthy from selling the crops to the grain markets. Wang Lung builds more to his house and buys new clothing for his family making himself socially well known throughout the town as a wealthy man. Dantes and Lung have both become prosperous and wealthy as a result from luck, hard work, and determination.