The Family (Ba Jin novel)

The Family (家, pinyin: Jiā, Wade-Giles: Chia) is an semi-autobiographical novel by Chinese author Ba Jin, the pen-name of Li Feigan (1904-2005). The novel chronicles inter-generational conflict between old ways and progressive aspirations in an upper-class family in the city of Chengdu, a prosperous but provincial city in the fertile Sichuan basin in the early 1920s following the New Culture Movement. The novel was wildly popular among China's youths and established the author as a leading voice of his generation.

The novel was first serialized in 1931-2 and then released in a single volume in 1933. The original title was Turbulent Stream (激流 Jīliú), but changed after Ba Jin released it as a single volume.

Synopsis

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.

Characters

Publication history, translations, and adaptations

The Family was first serialized in 1931-2. Together with Spring and Autumn, two novels Ba Jin wrote in the period 1939-40, it forms the trilogy, Turbulent Stream Trilogy (激流三部曲).

An English translation by Sidney Shapiro was published in 1958 by Foreign Languages Press (Beijing), with a third edition in 1978. Shapiro's translation was based on the 1953 People's Publishing House text, in which the author made corrections. Ba Jin made further changes for Shapiro's translation. The 1972 Anchor Books (New York) edition was edited by Olga Lang, Ba Jin's biographer. The New York edition omits the article "the" from the title, which makes "family" a more general concept rather than limiting it to this particular family. In her Editor's Note, Lang discusses the history of the text, pointing out that certain passages, the anarchist elements, had been deleted from the 1958 Foreign Languages Press edition. The Anchor edition restored three prefaces by the author, newly translated, as well as some of the omitted passages.[5]

A play and two films were based on the novel. The play was adapted by famous playwright Cao Yu in 1941.[6] A Mainland Chinese TV adaptation, starring Huang Lei, Lu Yi and Huang Yi, was produced in 2007.

In The Family Ba Jin mentions Wu Yu (a.k.a. Wu Youling), when Juemin and Juexin discuss in a favorable manner how he is going to teach at their school. In the Sidney Shapiro translation Wu Yu is not mentioned by name; instead he is referred to as "the man who wrote that article, 'Cannibal Confucian Morality' in the New Youth magazine"[7]

Comparative perspective

The Family mentions many of the books and authors which inflamed the young protagonists, giving a vivid picture of intellectual life in a provincial capital. The tone and theme was influenced by works that also influenced many Chinese authors of Ba Jin's generation, for instance A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen,[8] about the fate of a woman trapped in the physical and social structures of her marriage. The Family is often compared to the 18th-century novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, a richly poetic and tragic chronicle of the life of a prominent family living within a great house. Though he did not mention it as a model, Ba Jin, like all educated Chinese of his time, had been familiar with the work from his youth. Where the earlier work is fatalistic and told with philosophical allegory, however, the young heroes of Family leaves home to pursue lives of worldly engagement.[9]

Reception

Mei Han, author of the "Family" entry in The Facts on File Companion to the World Novel: 1900 to the Present, said that the most "moving" portions of The Family were the deaths of Mingfeng, Mei, and Ruijue.[2]

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Han, p. 260.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Han, p. 261.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Feng, p. 90.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Feng, p. 89.
  5. ↑ Anchor edition., Editor's Note, p. v; Introduction, p. xix.
  6. ↑ Anchor edition., Introduction, p. xxiii.
  7. ↑ Chow, p. 144. Quote from p. 17 of the Sidney Shapiro translation (Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1989)
  8. ↑ Anchor edition., p. 34.
  9. ↑ Olga Lang Pa Chin and His Writings: Chinese Youth Between Two Revolutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 83-84

Further reading

External links

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