CHINA, NATIONAL, SOCIETY, Commentary: The Day the Light Went Out

Ba Jin 1904 - 2005


By Deng Jing

He witnessed the rise and fall of a century; we witnessed the conclusion of a time.

A light extinguished: And with it the last fragile connection between the present and past century broke. The umbilical cord attaching us to classic Chinese literature was cut by the death of one man. We became lost at 7:06 p.m., October 17th, 2005. At that moment, Ba Jin died.


Ba Jin, whose original name was Li Yaotang, was born November 24, 1904, in Chengdu, Sichuan Province--101 years ago. Being the fourth son of an official in the Qing dynasty, at 19 he ran away from home under the influence of the May 4th movement. China at that time was at the edge of complete collapse, which spurred Ba Jin's generation to seek desperately the means for her survival and revival.

Suffering from the pain and restrictions in a federal family, Ba Jin embraced the idea of anarchy. His penname, Ba Jin, was the combination of the sounds of two anarchists' names. He went to Paris and in a shabby room with little sunlight began his first novel in gloom and loneliness.

Returning home in 1928, Ba Jin was at the height of his literary powers. Among many excellent works, his trilogy, Family, Spring, Autumn, influenced a whole generation. The trilogy is partly autobiographical, depicting the fall of a feudal family--especially the different fates of three brothers.

Ba Jin, distressed by his elder brother's suicide (as expressed in the novels), devoted passion and indignity to his work, which aroused a great uprising among Chinese youth to break away from the smothered family ideal and search for a new way of life.

He said he wrote with blood. And his peers felt the sincerity. Numerous youths,
modeling the characters, decided their fate themselves rather than their parents. To them, reading Ba Jin's books was the turning points of their lives. He was admired as the intimate friend of youth and the witness of a time.

All the glory a writer aspires to--at only 27, he joined the first rank of Chinese writers with the trilogy that changed a time--became fatal in the Cultural Revolution. Together with his beloved China, Ba Jin confronted a ten-year nightmare. In the nightmare he saw his friends betray him, his wife beaten to death, his faith distorted, and his country retreat into darkness.

Against all odds, Ba Jin argued that the cause of the Cultural Revolution should not only be attributed to the "gang of four" but to everyone who spoke falseness and bushwa. Everyone, being both victim and participant, must take responsibility for their own tragedy.

Among the voices of accusation against the "gang of four," Ba Jin's was the most direct and piercing. He picked up his pen to cry out as soon as he could. In the 80s, he began to write Confessions, which grew to a total of 420 thousand words. With unbelievable courage and frankness he confessed his inner mind from those days, and to the flam he spoke to survive.

Again his work--at intervals of half a century--aroused great emotional reaction among readers. This kind-hearted gentleman flintily uncovered the scars of his generation, which others wished to forget forever. He forced them to look into its face.

And that wasn't enough. He was the first and the only person who openly appealed for the construction of a Cultural Revolution museum, which, due to 'this and that,' is still under discussion.

"Speaking flam led to the Cultural Revolution. What I say is not necessarily the truth; but truth comes into being on the foundation of words out of one's own will."

To face bravely the stain and distortion of our nature, Ba Jin took himself as the example. This move gained him respect again, along with libel.

Some critics accused Confessions of seeking only fame, sniping against the government for that sake only, or advocating "liberalism," employing a skill popular in the revolution.

Ba Jin replied: "Speaking out what I want to say, I can leave the world with relief." It is acknowledged that if his former works encouraged youth to break the manipulation of traditional morality, then this book--written after he was 60--was a perfect breakthrough from his own restrictions.

It took him eight years to complete Confessions, largely due to health problems. In 1999, Ba Jin in fact lost the ability to write. As a writer he was nearly driven mad: "Soldiers always die on the battlefield; why can I not die holding my pen?!"

Disease not only deprived him of writing but also his contact with friends. For fear of infection no one except doctors were allowed to enter his sickroom before the end was near.

"Today we all gather at his bed, watching for him," Ba Jin's grandson told journalists. In his last hours his kin and friends surrounded Ba Jin in silence. They had not seen him at a close distance for a very long time.

Living for more than a hundred years and seeing the passing of friends one after another, Ba Jin said: "It's a punishment to be a macrobian."

In 1999, he demanded euthanasia rather than an operation. Death seemed a relief to him. However, with the endeavor of doctors he survived and his first sentence was: "Thank you; I shall live for you all."

Indeed his existence was mitigative for us in this noisy world; a reminder of the passion, idealism, true love and faith that his generation died for but we abandoned. He was the conscience of China. We relied on him as children do a guardian, selfishly putting all the responsibility on his shoulders to wallop, knowing confidently that he would call us back from the abyss.

But now there is no one to watch over us.