Ba Jin (Wade-Giles: Pa Chin, 巴金) was born Li Yaotang (李尧棠) in 1904, during the last years of the Manchu dynasty. Ba grew up in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. Raised in a family of absentee landlords in a household of four generations of extended family members and dozens of servants, Ba was well-educated and greatly influenced by anarchist writings, particularly Piotr Kropotkin's famous pamphlet "An Appeal to the Young."
When Ba's parents passed, his grandfather took over as head of the family. According to Ba, his grandfather was tyrannical. When Ba's grandfather died, an elder uncle assumed the role of patriarch. Family tensions came to a head, and in 1923 Ba left Chengdu to study in...
