The Family (Ba Jin novel)

The Family (家, pinyin: Jiā, Wade-Giles: Chia) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Chinese author Ba Jin, the pen-name of Li Feigan (1904-2005). His most famous novel, it 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 youth 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.

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.

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.

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