China's most famous living author turns 100 today. While Ba Jin's influence and impact on the country's literary community will be studied for centuries, his words continue to inspire.
Literary master Ba Jin would probably never have guessed he would live to see his 100th birthday today. And if asked long ago, he'd be equally surprised to see so many celebrations marking the occasion across the country.
Exhibitions and symposiums about Ba Jin's works are being held in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu; books about the author are published in vast volumes displayed in the most conspicuous places at bookstores; the Ba Jin Literature Museum was built in Chengdu, Sichuan Province -- his birthplace -- to house most of his works, pictures and memorabilia; and plenty of TV documentaries have been made to mark the occasion.
To cap it all, his signature novel Family has been adapted into four different versions -- drama, Yueju, Huju and Sichuan operas -- for the stage. Everything has led up to a crescendo. Li Xiaolin, Ba Jin's daughter and the editor of Shouhuo (Harvest) magazine, says her father, when he was able to speak, always expressed a desire for low-key birthday celebrations. "Anything big-spending or excessive will go against my father's spirit," she says. Despite Li's polite decline to organize activities today, many local Ba Jin devotees have lined up a flurry of events to salute the writer's tireless efforts in Chinese contemporary literature. Born in Sichuan Province, Ba Jin, (his real name is Li Yaotang), has become one of the most revered Chinese authors of the 20th century, along with Lu Xun, Mao Dun and Guo Moruo.
With his ability to walk and speak lost due to Parkinson's disease and lung complications, Ba Jin has never given up hope of becoming a centenarian. Of all the major writers active in the first half of the 20th century, Ba Jin is probably the only one still living. His irreplaceable position in China's literary pantheon makes his survival highly symbolic.
"He's a great writer, but he's also a writer-celebrity," says Qi Ming, 71, a former television cameraman and Ba Jin's friend for more than 20 years.
"His story as a spearhead in Chinese literature competes with his work." Qi is holding a free photo exhibition of Ba Jin's day-to-day life at the Peninsula Art Gallery.
Approximately 100 moments from Ba Jin's life were culled from Qi's monstrous picture portfolio that started after their first meeting in 1977.
Whenever something important happened to Ba Jin, such as former French President Francois Mitterand awarding him the title of Commander of the Legion of Honor, Qi would be nearby, shouldering his television camera as a journalist.
Many exclusive photos have been previously unreleased to the public including more personal photos that reveal a different side of Ba Jin's life. One shows the writer receiving a pedicure, another walking alone in the snow, and finally another of Ba Jin playing happily with his grand children.
"We've had many different kinds of visitors these days," says Ren Guoxiong, curator of the gallery. "The response has been gratifying."
"Ba Jin doesn't like being photographed," says Ren, adding that the gallery expects more visitors this week as people celebrate the author's birthday.
Few photographers could get as close to Ba Jin as Qi Ming did. They've shared a strong bond that has endured for many years." Qi admits that word-of-mouth from famous painters enabled him to find favor with the writer. "These photos are not only for the public to know Ba Jin better, but also for those who research Ba Jin and his writing," says Qi.
"The various facial expressions and the look of the entire universe in his eyes trace the complexities of the writer's mind, which helps build the different facet of the writer we know."
Born into an official's family and receiving a good education under private tutorship, Ba Jin was a high-spirited youth who rebelled against the bondage of feudal family living.
The May 4th Movement in 1919 imbued him with democratic ideals. He went to France in 1927 to study. From France he released his maiden work "Destruction."
It expressed his sadness toward China's status in the world at that time and his hope for revolution. Inspired by anarchism, he took his pseudonym Ba Jin from two anarchists' names, "Bakunin" and "Kropotkin," and even described Du Daxin, the hero of novel Destruction, as a person who turned his love toward human beings into hate. Though Ba Jin has said he never intended to be a writer, words empowered him to fight the enemy. Indeed, the pen is mightier than the sword. Returning to China, Ba Jin still found no way to realize his dream.
"I am a person always full of contradictions," he once said. "It was hard to choose devoting myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.'' But finally he picked up his pen again. He wrote at a furious pace. During the 1929-1937 period, he was so productive that Lu Xun, the "Father of Modern Chinese Literature," praised Ba as "a writer with passion and progressive thinking.'' His collection of writing includes numerous novels, short stories and essays -- totaling more than 6 million words. His famous tomes include the 14-volume Works of Ba Jin and the Select Works of Ba Jin with the stories Family, Spring, Autumn, The Trilogy of Love, A Dream of Sea and Autumn in Spring.
The novel Family is semi-autobiographical, telling the history of a big family's rise and fall in the early 20th century.
In the early 1980s, Ba Jin's other important work Random Thoughts, in which he talks about his behavior and experiences during the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976), was published. It reads almost as a confession from the aged intellectual. His translated works have won him many honors such as the 1982 Dante International Prize, the title of Commander of the Legion of Honor of France in 1983 and the first Fukuoka Special Asian Culture Prize in 1990. Ba Jin's wife, Xiao Shan, passed away in 1972.
Following their father, both their daughter, Li Xiaolin, and son, Li Xiaotang, devote themselves to literature. Ba Jin is one of the few writers in China who lives not on government pay, but on royalties from his writing. On his 80th birthday, he said, "I've lived on royalties all my life. It is the readers who have supported me."
His humble unassuming personality makes Ba Jin beloved and respected by his readers. Zhao Lanying, 53, a senior reporter with Xinhua News Agency, is an avid reader of Ba Jin's works. She also established a close relationship with the writer which eventually inspired her to write a book, her newly published Close to Ba Jin.
Drawing on private conversations, personal recollections, diaries and letters, Zhao, the woman in whom Ba Jin preferred to confide in on matters both big and small, has written an account of the unique literary figure in China's history.
When asked why she wrote the book, Zhao says, "I have made this book as true to his spirit as possible, as inspiring, as loving. Over the last few years I've taken time to reflect on what I have witnessed."
The book reveals new facts about Ba Jin's life and gives insight to the writer's innermost world.
"The Ba Jin we know," Zhao says, "with all his ups and downs, is more than anything, a true human being."
(Xinhua News Agency November 25, 2003)
