His life spanned the end of the last imperial dynasty, warlords, Nationalists, war, the communist takeover and the chaos of the ultra-leftists’ Cultural Revolution. He was the sole survivor of the first generation of authors to write in the vernacular rather than in formal classical Chinese.

Born into a wealthy family of officials in southwestern China, he changed his name from Li Feigan to Ba Jin — the Chinese rendition of the first and last syllables of the names of the Russian anarchists, Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Kropotkin, reflecting his fascination with the themes of universal love and revolution.

A prolific writer, Ba Jin had a dozen novels and four collections of short stories to his credit by 1937, but he is best known for his semi-autobiographical trilogy — Family in 1937, Spring in 1938 and Autumn in 1940. These became classics for their moving descriptions of the tribulations of young members of a large family who struggled to break away from their elders, only to court stubborn opposition and tragic outcomes.

The works are compulsory for every Chinese junior school student — a sign of Ba Jin’s return to favour a few years after he came under attack from Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976. He had sung the praises of Chairman Mao’s new China, but when his wife died in 1973 after being denied medical treatment he began to question that political maelstrom.

He was rehabilitated in 1977, and four years later was elected chairman of the Chinese Writers’ Association. In 1985 he called for an end to restrictions on writers in China and said the country should build a museum to remember the victims of the Cultural Revolution lest later generations forget.

His words are engraved at the entrance to China’s only such museum, a privately-founded collection on a hillside in southern Guangdong province that opened this year. However, he never openly attacked the Chinese leadership and some Chinese writers believe that he failed to seize the opportunity to fight for greater freedom of expression.

“He was a nice man, but he never used the position he was given to criticise or to challenge authority,” said Dai Qing, the dissident author who has not been allowed to publish in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Ba Jin said he wrote “to expose enemies. They include all the old traditional concepts, the irrational systems that obstruct progress, all the forces that destroy human nature.

“Since I’m not good at speaking, I have to turn to writing to express my feelings, and to let out the fire within me,” he said.

MASTER'S VOICE

From A Battle for Life, the story of how a worker recovered from burns:

“Doctor, let me implore you to save me.

“It isn’t boasting when I say that I am very important and the furnace cannot go on without me.

“I can leave my family, wife and children, without anxiety, but what about the furnace?”

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