The Autobiography of Ba Jin is a portrait of the author’s early life in the compound of his enormous, educated, and wealthy family. Scholars estimate some 80-100 people lived on the family compound, headed by Ba Jin’s grandfather, and which included the grandfather’s two wives, concubines, all the male offspring and their wives, grandchildren and eventually great-grandchildren as well as numerous servants for each family.

  Ba Jin vividly recreates the life of a privileged family in late Qing imperial times, including the obligations, dreams, cruelty, and helplessness that they faced.  He describes his parents vividly and lovingly, yet does not spare them and records acts of cruelty they engaged in toward the less fortunate -- namely, servants and defendants at the father's yamen (the traditional court compound, where he presided as judge and lived with his family).  For example, Ba Jin describes observing his father extract confessions through the use of torture, and his mother, whom he loves dearly, is shown destroying the life of a young wet nurse simply because of the nurse's appetite for cucumber (of all things!).

  After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Ba Jin depicts a life rife with terror and tragedy: soldiers from competing armies rampage through his hometown, family members die of mysterious ailments sometimes only weeks after catching a chill, and yet Ba Jin never loses his desire to help his society modernize, and with a spirit of optimism eventually leaves home to embark on his journey as a writer.  In 1975, Ba Jin was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. When Ba Jin died in 2005 at the age of 101, his body of work—more than 80 books—was once again celebrated in articles throughout China and the world.