ABSTRACT

As a writer and political activist, Ba Jin (also written as Pa Chin, 1904–2005) wished above all to emulate his hero, the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), and inspire Chinese youth to rise up to create a just society. Born into the Li family of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in China’s interior, in private life he was known by his given and courtesy names, Li Yaotang and Li Feigan, respectively. After he launched his writing career in Shanghai in the late 1920s, he adopted the pen name Ba Jin, borrowing the first syllable from the name of another famous anarchist, Bakunin (1814–1876), and the last from the Chinese spelling of Kropotkin’s name (jin). Ba Jin’s family was wealthy and well educated. His uncles, brothers, and cousins all took an interest in events in the wider world, subscribing to literary magazines and reading the news from eastern China in the tumultuous years after WWI that witnessed the rise of the New Culture movement in China. By the time he was fifteen, Ba Jin had obtained a Chinese translation of Kropotkin’s Appeal to the Young, first published in French in 1880. In his autobiography, he recalls its effects on him – he was so moved he could not sleep and, weeping with joy at discovering a kindred spirit, he dedicated himself to transforming the cruel social order and saving humanity from the injustices embedded in it. 1