Ba Jin
(b. 1904), popular Chinese writer. Ba Jin (Li Feigan), who has written numerous works in a variety of genres, is one of the most popular Chinese writers of the twentieth century. From the early 1950s until the 1980s, he suffered sometimes vicious political persecution. Although his popularity and prestige were revived in the post-Mao era, the injustices he endured from the 1950s onward seem to have put an end to his creative writing. However, from the late 1920s to the late 1940s, Ba Jin was an extremely prolific writer of fiction, penning more than seventy short stories and twenty novels. These sometimes melodramatic but consistently humanitarian works criticize poverty, war, greed, and other social injustices. His characters confront difficult ethical situations demanding the sacrifice of personal interests for the sake of a larger good.
The best known of these works is his novel Jia (Family), first published in 1931. Family chronicles the breakdown of the large and wealthy Gao family between the years 1919 and 1923. In it, Ba Jin represents the traditional Chinese family as a structure that smothers the individual dreams and aspirations of idealistic youth. The novel also depicts the suffering of women in modern China and momentous historical events of the time. Family has been canonized as one of the great masterpieces of modern Chinese literature.
Further Reading
Ba Jin. (1993) Bajin Xiaoshuo Quanji (Ba Jin's Collected Fiction). Taipei, Taiwan: Yuanliu.
——. (1989) Family. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.
Lang, Olga. (1967) Ba Chin and His Writings: Chinese Youth between the Two Revolutions. Harvard East Asia Series, 28. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mao, Nathan. (1978) Ba Chin. Boston: Twayne.
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