|
|
       |
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BA JIN!
Ba Jin lived in France as a student, where he wrote his first novel Destruction, then in Shanghai where he wrote many other novels. His book The General (Shanghai, 1934) was dedicated to Emma Goldman. "Youth is the hope of mankind." Ba actually first learned these words from Bartolomeo Vanzetti. As a student in Paris, Ba exchanged correspondence with the imprisoned Vanzetti, & a spiritual baton was passed from the prisoner who stood falsely accused & condemned to death to a young student in a foreign land. "May the next generation not commit such foolish, ignorant acts." In 1949, under pressure from the Communists, he began rewriting his stories, removing or replacing all anarchist references with Communist ones. But by 1966 he was again in disgrace, branded
& his writings were condemned as seditious. & then in 1976 Ba found new notoriety, in China & abroad, with novels now denouncing the Communist system & the compromises he had made to survive. Ba Jin 's best known
novel is Family (Anchor Books, 1972). He is
now over 95 & lives in Shanghai. He is widely
considered China’s greatest living author. See Return from Silence: Five prominent & controversial Chinese writers speak on their roles in the modernization of China. (1 hour video cassette available): The life & work of five esteemed Chinese writers whose modern classics shaped China's past: Ba Jin, Mao Dun, Ding Ling, Cao Yu, & Ai Qing. Produced by Chung-wen Shih (George Washington University, 1982). http://www.sgi.org/english/archives/quarterly/9910/portraits.html
http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/china.html |
|
November 26, 1904 - Ba Jin (aka Pa Chin
[pseud. of Li Feigan]) is born. Chinese novelist,
discovered anarchism with the reading of Peter Kropotkin
& Emma Goldman & created his pseudonym Ba (from Bakunin)
& Jin (from Kropotkin). Cruelly persecuted, but finally, in the
decade of Deng Xiao-ping's reforms, he was elected
honorary chairman of Chinese Writers' Association.
Elected a contender for the 
sorti des rangs pour prendre sa
défense, je n'ai pas osé."