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Ba Jin (pseud. of
Li Feigan) was born on November 25, 1904 in Chengdu, Sichuan
Province, into an official's family. He received a good education
under private tutorship. The May Fourth Movement in 1919 imbued
him with with both anarchic and democratic ideals. The following
year, he studied English at Chengdu Foreign Language School.
In 1923, he moved to Shanghai, and then to Nanjing where he entered
the preparatory school affiliated with the Southeast China University.
During the two-year study he wrote and translated several articles
on anarchism. In 1927, he went to France, where he wrote his
first novel "Destruction" about a depressed young anarchist.
His pen name was chosen from the Chinese transliterations of the
first syllable of the name Bakunin and of the last syllable of
the name Kropotkin, two anarchists that he liked. He returned
to Shanghai in 1929 and became a serious writer. During the War
of Resistance against Japan, he moved from place to place, and
was the council member of the All-China Federation of Writers
and Artists. He suffered cruel persecution, and finally,
in the decade of Deng Xiao-ping's reforms, he was elected honorary
chairman of Chinese Writers' Association. His works include "Family,"
"Spring," "Autumn," and others. |
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