Bulletin Number Five 1984

downfall of the Gang of Four, I went over what was problematical where I was concerned and felt I myself too, must bear some of the re­ sponsibility. During a certain period, there were times when I took the false words of the Gang of Four to be true, and there were times I bowed to brute force and stayed alive by saying false things. Now I have turned over a new leaf and am determined to speak the truth. We cannot expect others to speak honestly unless we do it ourselves. I want to put down my own experiences during those days mainly to remind people that this kind of catastrophe should not be allowed to happen again. I f we all think for ourselves, we will not allow others to walk all over us. I f a writer wants to write, he has to think for himself, or else what good does another writer do to society. Q. Will writers in China be under much pressure not to speak the truth? A. I cannot say there will be no pressure at all, but it will not be great. I f you see life and facts in such a way and analyse them in such amanner, no one can force you to do otherwise. To any piece of work there are bound to be different responses. Some people will criticize it, others will be in favour of it. What matters is that one thinks for oneself and has one's own perception of life. Q. A t present ， are writers in China still subjected to many restrictions in their writings? A. I f one's thought is more liberated, one's writing will be more liberated. I f one is constantly worrying whether one has stepped over the lines, or whether one is right, one w ill feel that there are plenty of restraints. Writers ought to speak the truth and put down what they believe, and let readers form their own opinion. Q. What do you think about the contemporary writers in China? A. I do not read much as I suffer from ill health. On the whole I find that some young and middle-aged writers can write better than people of my generation. Life itself nurtures writers. After the ten-year long Cultual Revolution, many writers start to see life in a better per spective and write on a wider range of subjects. They are able to produce more mature works based on their own experiences, especially some of the middle-aged writers. Q. What advice can you offer a young writer? A. The prerequisite of good writing is that a writer should have something to offer. Of course, the more knowledge he has, the better. Ideally speaking, he should be armed to teeth with it. Then he must keep on writing as practice makes perfect. Q. Could you tell us what progress has been made in the building up o f the ‘Modern Literature Archives' which you initiated? A. The Modern Literature Archives are a unit under the Association of Chinese Writers and are housed in the old Temple of Longevity in the western suburbs of Beijing. There is a pre paratory committee, comprising more than twenty members. The archives start from scratch and grow steadily. So far 50,000 volumes have been collected, and the collection of other materials is in progress. At present, we have succeeded in collecting many manuscripts, letters, pictures etc. of Mao Dun, Lao She and myself. We have made several feature display rooms open to visitors from literary circles on a trial basis. The official opening will, however, not be held until early next year. I f we have enough money one day, we shall build a better place to house the Archives. Q. Finally, would you say something about your pseudonym? Many people in the past wrongly assumed that it is derived from the names o f the two anarchists, Bakunin and Kropotkin, using the first and last characters o f the Chinese transliterations. A. I have explained that time and again, yet those who do not believe it just w ill not believe it. In 1928, after I completed my first novel, Destruction, at La Fontaine, a secondary school in Chateau-Thierry in France, I was looking for a pseudonym. Just then, a Chinese school-mate o f mine there, Ba Enbo, killed himself by jumping into a river. In honour of his memory, I adopted the first character ‘Ba' from his name. As I was then translating Kropotkin's book, The Origin and Development o f Ethics, so I took the last character from the Chinese trans literation of his name and putting the two together made up the pseudonym ‘Ba Jin'. When I revisited Chateau-Thierry in 1979 ， the student register at La Fontaine was no longer complete. I could not find my own name there, but I did find the name of Ba Enbo. INTERVIEWS 23