Ba Jin

Ba Jin (Jin Ba) was one of the most influential Chinese novelists of the twentieth century — a writer whose passionately anti-feudal fiction helped shape modern Chinese literature. The Family, the first volume of his celebrated Turbulent Stream trilogy, exposed the suffocating hierarchies of traditional Chinese clan life with such emotional force that it became a rallying cry for a generation seeking liberation from Confucian patriarchy. Ward Four captures the desperation of wartime China with equal intensity. Ba Jin's literary legacy is inseparable from his political courage — he survived the Cultural Revolution's persecution to become one of China's most honored literary figures, spending his final years advocating for a museum dedicated to the Cultural Revolution's victims.