Background
Li Yaotang was born on November 25, 1904 in Chengdu, Sichuan, into a family of officials. His paternal grandfather ruled the large, five generation household with an autocratic hand, which young Li found stifling.
1938
(The Family focuses on three brothers from the Gao family,...)
The Family focuses on three brothers from the Gao family, Juexin, Juemin and Juehui, and their struggles with the oppressive autocracy of their fengjian and patriarchal family. The idealistic, if rash Juehui, the youngest brother, is the main protagonist, and he is frequently contrasted with the weak eldest brother Juexin, who gives in to the demands from his grandfather, agrees to an arranged marriage and carries on living a life he does not like to live.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881333735/?tag=2022091-20
(As the forth volume of Selected Works of Ba Jin, Fog, Rai...)
As the forth volume of Selected Works of Ba Jin, Fog, Rain and Lightning are known as the "Love" Trilogy. Fog tells the encounter of a returned overseas student in a hotel of the old society, reflects the fight between the arranged marriage in the old days and the free love, and highlights the social characteristics at that time. Rain tells the experience of Wu Renmin, a friend of the protagonist Zhou Ruyun. Lightning continues the story in Rain: in the group of these hot-blooded youngsters, Wu Renmin appears as the oldest and respected revolutionist and becomes a person of new type.
https://www.amazon.com/Fog-Rain-Lightning-Chinese-Jin/dp/7541139467/?tag=2022091-20
(Vol 2: Garden of Repose, Bitter Cold Nights)
Vol 2: Garden of Repose, Bitter Cold Nights
https://www.amazon.com/Selected-Works-Ba-Jin-Vol/dp/7119005758/?tag=2022091-20
李尧棠
Li Yaotang was born on November 25, 1904 in Chengdu, Sichuan, into a family of officials. His paternal grandfather ruled the large, five generation household with an autocratic hand, which young Li found stifling.
As a child Li was taught to read and write first by his mother, and later by privately engaged house tutors. It was not until the death of grandfather in 1917, causing a power struggle which ended with an elder uncle emerging victorious, that he was released to explore the world. As a youngster, Li Yaotang read widely and was deeply influenced by Piotr Kropotkin's famous pamphlet, An Appeal to the Young, which he read at age fifteen.
In 1920, Li Yaotang enrolled, with an elder brother, in the Chengdu Foreign Language Specialist School to study English. It was there he first engaged in the organization of literary journal Crescent and wrote a number of vers libre. Joining an anarchist organization, the Equality Society, he became its most prominent member, actively distributing propaganda leaflets.
Three years later, Li Yaotang moved to Shanghai and subsequently to Dongnan University, Nanjing on the pretext of study, but mainly, as he put it, to escape the feudalistic (fengjian) influence of his family. There, he mastered Esperanto within one year of study and took part in leftist socialist strikes, while remaining active in the anarchist movement, writing a pamphlet on the Chicago Anarchist Martyrs.
Li Yaotang returned to Shanghai in 1925 to prepare for a literary career. In January 1927, at the age of 23, he left for France. There he continued to explore his earlier interest in French fiction and the French Revolution and wrote a novel called Mi-wang (Destruction), which was serialized in the leading literary journal Hsiao-shuo Yüeh-pao (Short Story Magazine). Upon his return to China in 1929, he found himself an acclaimed writer. From then on Li Yaotang wrote prolifically and was also active as a publisher and editor.
In most of his early novels and stories, including Ai-ch'ing ti san-pu-ch'ü (The Love Trilogy), the characters are flat and rather bookish, but because they speak out for love and revolution, for a new China and a new humanity, they had a tremendous appeal for young readers of that time. Autobiographically grounded in his youthful experience, Chieh-liu san-pu-ch'ü (1933-1940; The Torrent: A Trilogy) is much more impressive for its detailed exposé of the squalor and sickness of a large, tradition-bound Chinese family. The first volume, Chia (The Family), has been the most popular of his works because of its great wealth of tear-jerking scenes, but it was the third volume, Ch'iu (Autumn), that first evinced his powers as a novelist in his unsentimental portrayal of the clashes between good and bad characters.
Li Yaotang continued to mature in the 19406 in such works as Hsiao-jen hsiao-shih (Little People and Little Events), a volume of short stories, and Ti-ssu ping-shih (Ward Number Four), a novel about patients in a wartime hospital. These prepared for his masterpiece, Han-yeh (Cold Nights), written in 1947. This novel, of rare tenderness and psychological truth, studies a trio (son, wife, and mother) against the background of the worsening conditions in wartime Chungking.
His career as a serious novelist was immediately blighted with the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. Thereafter he wrote mainly as a foreign correspondent and produced slim volumes of reportage about the Korean and Vietnamese wars. As a foreign correspondent Li Yaotang spent time in Korea (1952), Japan (1961), and Vietnam (1962). With changes in the Communist regime in the 1960 he was severely persecuted and denounced as a counter-revolutionary. During the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1969) he was purged, but was reported to have reappeared during the 1976.
(The Family focuses on three brothers from the Gao family,...)
(As the forth volume of Selected Works of Ba Jin, Fog, Rai...)
(Vol 2: Garden of Repose, Bitter Cold Nights)
Li Yaotang was active in the Chinese anarchist movement from the 1920s until the Communist Party’s seizure of power in 1949.
His wife, Xiao Shan, died during the Revolution after being denied medical care, and the manner of her death traumatized Ba Jin for the rest of his life.
