What does Wang mean when he said there is a way when the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor.

There is still strange talk among the poor. Wang Lung hears a cryptic message from one of his neighbors. Times will change soon: "When the rich are too rich there are ways, and when the poor are too poor there are ways" (118). There is a point when the status quo changes because the poor are fed up with the rich. Wang Lung does not understand the talk of revolution among the poor. The cryptic forebodings of an uprising to come merely frighten him and fill him with a longing for the simple life he knows and trusts. The mob is stirring, and Wang Lung is not among them.

The tension becomes so great between the injustice of the rich toward the poor that a revolution results.