Ba Jin (1904-2005) was a noted Chinese writer best known for his autobiographical trilogy of novels called Torrent. The novels in the trilogy are Family (1931), Spring (1938), and Autumn (1940). They attack traditional social codes in China and the family system that the writer considered repressive. His other novels include A Dream of Sea (1932), Autumn in Spring (1932), Pleasure Garden (1944), and Cold Nights (1947). Ba Jin also wrote short stories and essays.
Ba Jin was born on Nov. 25, 1904, in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. He was originally called Li Yaotang or Li Feigan. His family was wealthy, and so he spent two years studying in Paris, returning to China in 1928.
During his youth, he was strongly attracted to anarchism (see Anarchism). He took the pen name Ba Jin from parts of the last names of two Russian anarchists, Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. He first signed this name to an essay he wrote on the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. He used the pen name again for his highly successful first novel Extinction (1929). After the Communists established the People’s Republic of China in 1949, he traveled widely. In 1981, he became chairman of the Chinese Writers Association. Ba Jin died on Oct. 17, 2005.
