Widely recognized as one of the greatest writers of modern Chinese literature, Ba Jin left us with numerous influential works, which have inspired and will encourage generations of Chinese.

One of China's most revered writers, Ba Jin, died in Shanghai on the evening of October 17th after a six-year battle with a malignant mesothelioma and other diseases. He passed away at a local hospital from high fever caused by heavy influenza, aged 101.

Widely recognized as one of the greatest writers of modern Chinese literature, Ba Jin left us with numerous influential works, which have inspired and will encourage generations of Chinese.

Ba Jin, who was originally given the name Li Yaotang, was born into an official's family on November 25, 1904 in Chengdu, a southwest city in China’s Sichuan Province. He was widely recognized as one of China's greatest literary masters and an outstanding publisher and editor. On hearing the sad news, many of his readers expressed their regrets.

"I've been reading professor Ba Jin's works since I was very young. On hearing of his passing away, I couldn't help taking out his works to have a review."

"I believe masters like him are becoming less and less, China is now lacking in these kind of figures. His death is undoubtedly a great loss. He had contributed so much to China's modern literature."

As a teenager, Ba Jin didn't expect to take up novel writing. His earliest goal was to be a social revolutionist. The first rebellious move he took was to revolt against his family. The May Fourth Movement, a political and cultural movement against imperialism and feudalism that broke out in Beijing in 1919, imbued him with both anarchistic and democratic ideas. Being part of the third generation of a large, wealthy traditional clan, he spent his childhood among up to 30 clan members and about the same number of servants. Every aspect of the clan reflected the suffocating and rotten feudal system it was rooted in. The patriarch, Ba Jin's grandfather, was the absolute god of the clan and controlled everything in it. The middle generation was corrupt and mentally crippled. The servants trampled underfoot, lived or died like grass. What Ba Jin saw sickened him. At the age of 20, several years after his parents' death, and with the help of his eldest brother, he left home for Shanghai. "It was just like getting rid of a terrible shadow," he later recalled.