Bulletin Number Five 1984

27th Congregation and Cold Nights, all of which were written under difficult circumstances, in tea houses in Guiyang, under faint candle-light in a wayward inn in Beibei, using Chinese ink ground on tea cup covers and writing on rough reed paper. All in all Ba Jin produced within two decades no less than twenty novels and novelettes, more than ten volumes of short stories, travels and essays ， more than twenty volumes o f translated Russian and other foreign works, par ticularly the novels of Turgenev, which totalled up to more than four million words. Indeed agolden harvest has come of his long toil. Ba Jin's novels were not only immensely popular but also had an impact on students and the intelli gentsia matched by few others. This was not only because of a very direct and highly emotional style of writing, but also because he was writing on the most urgent concern of his readers: their bewildered and anxious search for a way out of crumbling tradi tional institutions, and their angry protest against a disintegrating social system, the injustice of which was becoming increasingly obvious. Thus his work sprang directly from a search for the meaning of life, and he was striving to be true to his subjects, not just to be artistic. However, there could really be no division between truth and beauty in the final analy sis, and perchance that is where the moving power of Family ， Leisure Garden and Gold Nights really lies. Apart from writing, Ba Jin has also made important contributions towards the modern Chinese literary movement through his publication activities. Together with friends he founded the Culture and Life Publishing House in 1934 and served as its chief editor, in which position he saw to press a large number of Western literary works in translation, and discovered and helped along a great many young writers, some of them like Cao Yu ， He Qifang and Xiao Qian have long since become renowned in their own right. He also helped to establish the Ping Ming Publishing House in 1949 and was active in its work until the mid-fifties. After the inauguration of New China in 1949 ， distinction and honour came to Ba Jin: he was elected first a Member and then a Vice-Chairman of the All- China Federation of literary and Art Circles, a Vice- Chairman of the Association of Chinese Writers and also a Delegate to the First, the Second and the Third National People's Congresses; he had also been on foreign visits many times as the head of Chinese delegations of writers. In 1957 together with his good friend Jin Yi he founded and edited the bimonthly Harvest, which soon became the major literary magazine of China. He did not let his pen rest either, and published many volumes of short stories, essays and translated works. Yet it was not easy to turn around ‘the pen that was used to writing of darkness and agony ， to write instead of new people and their deeds, and to sing of the victory and joy of the common people'. He did make visits to mines, villages and the troops, in order to gain first-hand experience with workers, peasants and soldiers. But his many capacities and activities made life too busy, and he never felt he had enough time for gaining the intimate experience and insight necessary for dealing with these subjects which were new to him. Thus the pace of his output unavoidably slackened. Besides, to move forward, China had yet to go down a winding path. The Cultural Revolution brought unprecedented catastrophe to the people of China, and an author of Ba Jin's renown naturally would not be spared the brunt of its impact. He was repeatedly 'struggled against', was forced to casti gate himself, and to denigrate every single one of his own works and even his own person, was packed o ff to the ranks of 'demons and monsters', imprisoned in 'cowsheds', sent down to cadre schools, all that time witnessing the struggling on and falling down by the way side of his friends and relatives, even the one closest to him. But Ba Jin had strength and deter mination, and he endured those ten seemingly endless years in silence and disgrace without falling down. He did not merely live on, but actually rebuilt confidence and regained courage through reflection and soul-searching. Soon after the end of the Cultural Revolution, he already had his pen in hand and openly discussed the outrages of those ten years by examin ing his own record with a critical, unsparing eye and relentlessly analysing what led to the catastrophe. In unmistakable terms he called for courage and deter mination from everyone to speak the simple truth, to squarely face past wounds and mistakes, and to fight for justice and one's rights. Starting with 1979 ， his Random Thoughts is being serialized in the news paper, and by now has also appeared in four NEWS 3