Ba Jin (巴金)--(1904-2005)--(pseud. of Li Feigan), or Pa Chin, was born on November 25, 1904 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, into an official's family. He received a good education under private tutorship. Born into a wealthy family in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province in 1904, the writer, who preferred his pen name Ba Jin to his given names of Li Yaotang or Li Feigan, received a broad education in his hometown and Shanghai, and travelled to France from 1927 to 1928. The three - "The Family," "The Spring" and "The Autumn" - were enormously popular with Chinese youths at the time and throughout the century.

Ba Jin(巴金)--(1904-2005)--(pseud. of Li Feigan), or Pa Chin, 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. He 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 from cruel persecution, and finally, in the decade of Deng Xiao-ping's reforms, he was elected honorary chairman of Chinese Writers' Association. His death was in October 17, 2005, at the age of 101. His works include "Family," "Spring," "Autumn," and others.

"He was a scholar in every meaning of the word, with a noble character and a love for all," Li Xiaotang, son of Ba and his late wife Xiao Shan, told China Daily.

Born into a wealthy family in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province in 1904, the writer, who preferred his pen name Ba Jin to his given names of Li Yaotang or Li Feigan, received a broad education in his hometown and Shanghai, and travelled to France from 1927 to 1928.

It was in France that Ba started his literature career. His first novel, "Miewang" (destruction), was a tale of romance and revolution.

His literary body of work amounts to 13 million Chinese characters. He was best known for his trilogy "Jiliu" (torrent), which was written between 1931 and 1940, and included three semi-autobiographical novels.
The three - "The Family," "The Spring" and "The Autumn" - were enormously popular with Chinese youths at the time and throughout the century. They attacked the traditional Chinese family structure and depicted the struggles and tragedies, love and hatred of the young generation in a saga of family decline.

Some of his strongest writings were created during China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), including short novels "A Garden of Repose" (1944), "Ward No 4" (1946) and "Cold Nights" (1947), according to Chen, who has carried out academic research on the writer and his works for two decades.