Ba Jin

Ba Jin
Ba Jin in Berlin, 1956
Born
Li Yaotang / Li Feigan

(1904-11-25)25 November 1904
Chengdu, Sichuan, Qing China
Died17 October 2005(2005-10-17) (aged 100)
Shanghai, China
OccupationNovelist
Spouse
Xiao Shan
​
​
(m. 1936; died 1972)​
ChildrenLi Xiaolin
Li Xiao
Writing career
Pen nameBa Jin
Notable worksTurbulent Stream: Family, Spring, and Autumn
Love Trilogy: Fog, Rain, and Lightning
Notable awards1983: Legion of Honour
1990: Fukuoka Prize (special prize)
Ba Jin
Chinese巴金
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinBā Jīn
Wade–GilesPa1 Chin1
IPA[pá tɕín]
Yue: Cantonese
Yale RomanizationBāa Gām
JyutpingBaa1 Gam1
IPA[pa˥ kɐm˥]
Southern Min
Hokkien POJPa Kim
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese李堯棠
Simplified Chinese李尧棠
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinLǐ Yáotáng
Wade–GilesLi3 Yao2-t'ang2
IPA[lì jǎʊ tʰǎŋ]

Li Yaotang (Chinese: 李堯棠; pinyin: Lǐ Yáotáng; 25 November 1904 – 17 October 2005), better known by his pen name Ba Jin (Chinese: 巴金; pinyin: Bā Jīn) or his courtesy name Li Feigan (Chinese: 李芾甘; pinyin: Lǐ Fèigān), was a Chinese anarchist, translator, and writer. In addition to his impact on Chinese literature, he also wrote three original works in Esperanto, and as a political activist he wrote Family.

Name

He was born as Li Yaotang, with alternate name Li Feigan or Li Pei Kan (in Wade–Giles). The first word of his pen name may have been taken from Ba Embo, his classmate who committed suicide in Paris, which was admitted by himself, or from the first syllable of the surname of the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin; and the last character of which is the Chinese equivalent of the last syllable of Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin (克鲁泡特金, Ke-lu-pao-te-jin).

Biography

On November 25, 1904, Li Yaotang was born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, into a wealthy Li family. The family's wealth came mainly from the land acquired by his grandfather and father when they were officials, and Li Yaotang sometimes described his family as a "typical landlord's family". In 1919, Ba read Kropotkin's An Appeal to the Young and converted to anarchism.

Ba Jin left Chengdu to attend school in eastern China in 1923, and then traveled to France to study in 1927. It was partly owing to boredom that Ba Jin began to write his first novel, Miewang 灭亡 ("Destruction"). In France, Ba Jin continued his anarchist activism, translating many anarchist works, including Kropotkin's Ethics, into Chinese, which was mailed back to Shanghai's anarchist magazines for publication.

During the Cultural Revolution, Ba Jin was heavily persecuted as a counter-revolutionary. In his memoir, Ba Jin also wrote about his own participation in the persecution of friends and acquaintances.: 64  He asked that a Cultural Revolution Museum be set up in 1981. Ba Jin stated that such museums could include "concrete and real objects" and reconstruct "striking scenes" of the Cultural Revolution in order to engrave the upheaval of the period in Chinese national memory.: 64  In his view, passing on to later generations memories of this "catastrophic era" would help avoid history repeating itself.: 319  Ba Jin did not attempt to implement his proposal for a Cultural Revolution museum.: 324 

The Shantou Cultural Revolution Museum referenced the influence of Ba Jin on its establishment through displaying a depiction of his at the entrance as well as a quote of his, "Every town in China should establish a museum about the Cultural Revolution."

Former Residence of Ba Jin in Shanghai

Some critics of Ba Jin noted that his vision of a Cultural Revolution did not deviate much from the official judgment on the period contained in the 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China and that he did not propose how to treat the actions and figure of Mao Zedong in such a museum.: 324  Other critics contended that Ba Jin's vision privileged the suffering of elites during the Cultural Revolution and ignored the experience of the poor, many of whom remembered the Mao era as when they first received job security and health care, or who may remember the period as a time of simple virtue and close communities.: 324–325 

Ba Jin contributed calligraphy to photographer Yang Kelin's 1995 two volume work, The Cultural Revolution Museum.: 322 

Ba Jin's works were heavily influenced by foreign writers, including Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Herzen, Anton Chekhov, and Emma Goldman.

His married wife since 1944, Xiao Shan, died of cancer in 1972.

Ba Jin suffered from Parkinson's disease beginning in 1983. The illness confined him to Huadong Hospital in Shanghai from 1998. He died in 2005, aged 100.: 324 

Bibliography

English translations

Ba Jin stories in collections

Works

Short story collections
Children's literature
Novels and novellas
Autobiography and memoirs
Non-fiction
Letters
Others

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Obituary: Ba Jin, Chinese novelist and anarchist". The New York Times. 17 October 2005. Archived from the original on 23 August 2021. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 Gittings, John (18 October 2005). "Ba Jin (Obituary)". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 July 2016. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  3. ↑ Geoffrey Sutton, Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto Archived 2021-02-02 at the Wayback Machine, p. 180, Ed. Mondial, New York, ISBN 978-1-59569-090-6
  4. ↑ Van der Walt, Lucien; Schmidt, Michael (2009). Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism. AK Press. p. 20. ISBN 9781904859161.
  5. ↑ Gandini, Jean-Jacques (1995). "Ba Jin revisité [Destruction et A la mémoire de Ba Jin traduits et présentés par Angel Pino et Isabelle Rabut]". Perspectives Chinoises (in French). 31 (1): 69–71. Archived from the original on 25 June 2021. Retrieved 17 June 2021. que Ba était un hommage à un camarade de classe, Ba Enbo, rencontré lors de son séjour en France en 1927 et dont il apprit......
  6. ↑ "Pa Kin, grande figure de la littérature chinoise du XXe siècle". Le Monde (in French). 2005-10-18. Archived from the original on 2021-06-24. Retrieved 17 June 2021. le "Pa" n'a rien à voir avec Bakounine (prononcé en chinois Pa-ku-ning), mais s'inspire d'un certain Pa Enbo, un ami chinois de Château-Thierry qui s'était suicidé en se jetant dans une rivière.
  7. ↑ Many sources claim it comes from the Chinese transliteration of Mikhail Bakunin, and he refused to admit because of communists' harsh condemnation of Bakunin, who was an open rival of Marx. See: Rapp, John A.; Youd, Daniel M. (2015-04-03). "Ba Jin as Anarchist Critic of Marxism: Guest Editors' Introduction". Contemporary Chinese Thought. 46 (2): 3–21. doi:10.1080/10971467.2015.1003017. S2CID 143212159. Archived from the original on 2021-06-24. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
  8. ↑ Rapp, John A.; Youd, Daniel M. (2015-04-03). "Ba Jin as Anarchist Critic of Marxism: Guest Editors' Introduction". Contemporary Chinese Thought. 46 (2): 3–21. doi:10.1080/10971467.2015.1003017. S2CID 143212159. Archived from the original on 2021-06-24. Retrieved 17 June 2021. ......from the name for Peter Kropotkin (Ke-lu-pao-te-jin).
  9. ↑ "Ba Jin". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 24 June 2021. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
  10. ↑ "Obituary: Ba Jin". the Guardian. 2005-10-18. Archived from the original on 2016-07-30. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
  11. ↑ Lang, Olga (1967). Pa Chin And His Writings: Chinese Youth Between The Two Revolutions. Harvard University Press. p. 7. ISBN 9780674650503.
  12. ↑ Kong, Haili (5 June 2012). "Disease and Humanity: Ba Jin and His Ward Four: A Wartime Novel of China". Frontiers of Literary Studies in China. 6 (2): 199. doi:10.3868/s010-001-012-0012-8. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
  13. ↑ Ng, Mau Sang (1981). "Ba Jin and Russian Literature". Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews. 3 (1): 69. doi:10.2307/495337. ISSN 0161-9705. JSTOR 495337. Retrieved 20 February 2023.
  14. ↑ Stapleton, Kristin (2016). Fact in Fiction: 1920s China and Ba Jin's _Family_. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-5036-0106-2.
  15. ↑ Jaroslav Průšek and Zbigniew Słupski, eds., Dictionary of Oriental Literatures: East Asia (Charles Tuttle, 1978): 135-136.
  16. ↑ See Angel Pino, “Ba Jin as Translator,” tr. Ian MacCabe, in Peng Hsiao-yen & Isabelle Rabut (eds.), Modern China and the West: Translation and Cultural Mediation. Leiden-Boston: Brill, “East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture” (2), 2014, 28-105.
  17. 1 2 Tu, Hang (2025). Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past. Harvard University Asia Center. ISBN 9780674297579.
  18. ↑ Sippel, Nana (18 May 2017). ""Mystifizierung der Kulturrevolution" (Interview with Nora Sausmikat)" (in German). de:Gerda Henkel Stiftung. Archived from the original on 14 August 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
  19. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Li, Jie (2016). "Museums and Memorials of the Mao Era: A Survey and Notes for Future Curators". In Li, Jie; Zhang, Enhua (eds.). Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution. Harvard Contemporary China Series. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center. ISBN 978-0-674-73718-1.
  20. ↑ Li, Jie (2020). Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era. Duke University Press. p. 231. ISBN 978-147-801-018-0.
  21. ↑ Coonan, Clifford (27 June 2005). "Shining a light on Mao's dark era". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 9 April 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  22. ↑ He described Goldman as his "spiritual mother", and dedicated The General to her. See Preface, The General, and Olga Lang, Pa Chin and His Writings: Chinese Youth Between the Wars (Harvard University Press, 1967).

Further reading

Films