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· Name of article: (link) Ba Jin
· Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate. Because this person is related to my course, and is the author of our readings.
Lead
Li Yaotang (25 November 1904 – 17 October 2005), better known by his pen name Ba Jin and also known as Li Pei Kan, was a Chinese author and political activist best known for his novel The Family . He is considered to be one of the most important and widely read Chinese writers of the 20th century.
Guiding questions
· Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? Yes, it explores the Ba Jin concisely and clearly.
· Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? Yes, it does.
· Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article? Yes, it does.
· Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed? It is concise.
Lead evaluation
Content
Contents
o 2.2Ba Jin stories in collections
· 3Works
o 5.1Films
o 5.2Notes
Guiding questions
· Is the article's content relevant to the topic? Yes, it is.
· Is the content up-to-date? Yes, it is.
· Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? No, it is not.
· Does the article deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps? Does it address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics? Yes, it does.
Content evaluation
Tone and Balance
Guiding questions
Early life and anarchism[edit]
Born in Chengdu , Sichuan , Li was born into a scholarly family of officials. His paternal grandfather ruled the large, five generation household with an autocratic hand, which young Li found stifling, not unlike that depicted in his famous novel, The Family. As a child Li was taught to read and write first by his mother, and later by privately engaged house tutors. It was not until the death of this grandfather in 1917, causing a power struggle which ended with an elder uncle emerging victorious, that he was released to explore the world. As a youngster, Li read widely and was deeply influenced by Piotr Kropotkin 's famous pamphlet, An Appeal to the Young, which he read at age fifteen. Hugely impressed by Emma Goldman , whom he later referred to as his "spiritual mother", Li started a lifelong correspondence with her.
In 1920, Li enrolled, with an elder brother, in the Chengdu Foreign Language Specialist School to study English. It was there he first engaged in the organization of literary journal Crescent and wrote a number of vers libre . Joining an anarchist organization, the Equality Society, Li became its most prominent member, actively distributing propaganda leaflets.
Three years later, Li moved to Shanghai and subsequently to Dongnan University , Nanjing on the pretext of study, but mainly, as he put it, to escape the feudalistic ( fengjian ) influence of his family. There, he mastered Esperanto within one year of study and took part in leftist socialist strikes, while remaining active in the anarchist movement, writing a pamphlet on the Chicago Anarchist Martyrs .
France (1927–1928)[edit]
On graduation, he left on board a liner on February 15, 1927, with a friend for Paris , France, for further studies, where he lodged at the 5th arrondissement (three months at Rue Banville, then Rue Tournefort, No. 2). He described his life there as boring and monotonous, taking daily afternoon walks at the Jardin du Luxembourg and evening French lessons at Alliance Francaise . He recalled especially Rousseau 's statue at the Panthéon ("I almost knelt before it...he whom Tolstoy described as the conscience of the 18th century"), the River Seine and the tolling of the Notre Dame . In Paris, Li writes:
"In spring 1927, I was living atop a five-storied apartment at Paris's Quartier Latin , a small lodging full of gas and onion smell. I was lonely, I felt pain, sunlight hardly shone into my room: I missed my homeland and my family."
It was partly owing to boredom when Li began to write his first novel, Miewang (“Destruction”). In France, Li continued his anarchist activism, translated many anarchist works, including Kropotkin's Ethics, into Chinese, which was mailed back to Shanghai's anarchist magazines for publication. Alexander Berkman was one of many anarchist leaders he met there.
The trials of Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti filled the fervent writer with anger and Ba Jin worked tirelessly to champion their release. Vanzetti apparently was moved enough to reply to the young man from his American prison, with a package of anarchist texts for his readings. Their short correspondence ceased when Vanzetti was executed, along with Sacco, on August 23, 1927. Li published in late 1932 the short story The Electric Chair (电椅), to protest against their execution.
Shanghai and later life[edit]
On his return to Shanghai in 1928, Ba Jin continued writing and working on translations. His first novel, Destruction, was released serially by Fiction Monthly in 1929, a foremost literary magazine, and earned him many admirers.
During the next 10 years, Li acted as editor to several important publishing firms and periodicals, as well as composing the works which he is best known for – The Family (1931), The Love Trilogy Fog (1931), Rain (1933) and Lightning (1935), the novellas Autumn in Spring and A Dream of the Sea, the short story collection Mengya (“Germination”) and prose writings in Fuchou ("Vengeance") and Shen, Gui, Ren ("Gods, Ghosts and Men").
During the Second Sino-Japanese War , Ba Jin was actively involved in propaganda work against the Japanese invasion , working on the publication Nahan (“Outcries”, later renamed Fenghuo, “Beacons”) with Mao Dun . In the later stages of the war, Ba Jin completed the famous Torrents Trilogy — of which The Family (1931) was the first written — with Spring (1938) and Autumn (1940). Other works of the post-war period, like the short novels A Garden of Repose (1944), Ward Four (1946) and Cold Nights (1947), contain some of his strongest writing. He ceased fiction writing after the establishment of the People's Republic of China , choosing to concentrate on nonfiction instead.
During the Cultural Revolution , Ba Jin was heavily persecuted as a counter-revolutionary. His wife, Xiao Shan, died during the Revolution after being denied medical care, and the manner of her death traumatized Ba Jin for the rest of his life. He was rehabilitated in 1977, after which he was elected to many important national literary posts, including chairman of the Chinese Writers' Association (since 1983). The most significant work of his later years is the discursive writings in Suixiang Lu (translated as "Random Thoughts", five volumes, composed between 1978 and 1986), in which, among other things, he reflected on the Cultural Revolution in a painfully honest manner and asked specifically for a Cultural Revolution Museum to be set up as a deterrent for future generations.
He spoke and advocated Esperanto and in the 1980s was the vice-president of the Chinese Esperanto League .
Ba Jin's works were heavily influenced by foreign writers, including Émile Zola , Ivan Turgenev , Alexandr Herzen , Anton Chekhov , and Emma Goldman , and a substantial amount of his collected works are devoted to translations. His writing style, characterized by simplicity, avoids difficult, abstruse words, making him one of the most popular of all modern Chinese writers.
Ba Jin suffered from Parkinson's disease beginning in 1983, and the ailment almost completely debilitated him in his later years. The illness confined him to a hospital unable to speak and walk during the last few years of his life. Ba Jin died of cancer in Shanghai at the age of 100 (101 by Chinese reckoning) in 2005. His death marked the end of an era for Chinese literature , especially since he was the last major writer to live through the May Fourth Movement . He received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 1990.
Asteroid 8315 Bajin is named in his honor.
· Is the article neutral? Yes, it is.
· Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? No, it is not.
· Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? No, it is staying the appropriate point.
· Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another? No, it is staying the appropriate point.
Tone and balance evaluation
Sources and References
Guiding questions
References[edit]
· Ayers, W. (1950). "Shanghai Labor and the May Thirtieth Movement," Papers on China, 5:1-38. Harvard University, East Asian Research Center.
· Bao-Puo. (1925). "The Anarchist Movement in China: From a Letter of a Chinese Comrade." Tr. from the Russian, in Freedom. 39.423:4.
· (1953). "The Society for Literary Studies, 1921-1930." Papers on China. 7:34-79. Harvard University, East Asian Research Center.
· Chen Tan-chen. (1963). "Pa Chin the Novelist: An Interview." Chinese Literature. 6:84-92.
· Ch'en Chia-ai character. "Chung-kuo li-shih shang chih an-na-ch'i-chu -i che character (Anarchists in Chinese history); in K'o-lu-p'ao-t'e-chin hsueh-shuo kai-yao. pp. 379-410.
· Hsin ch'ing-nien (1908). "Chinese Anarchist in Tokyo," Freedom, 22.23:52.
· Olga Lang, Pa Chin and His Writings: Chinese Youth between the Wars (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967)
· Martin, H. and J. Kinkley, eds. (1992) Modern Chinese writers: self-portrayals. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
· Pino, Angel, “Ba Jin and the ‘Arshinov Platform’”. libcom.org
· Pino, Angel, “Ba Jin as Translator,” tr. Ian MacCabe, in Peng Hsiao-yen & Isabelle Rabut (eds.), Modern China and the West: Translation and Cultural Mediation. Leiden-Boston: Brill, “East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture” (2), 2014, 28-105.
·
· Razak, Dzulkifli Abdul (Oct. 30, 2005). "Leaving behind their legacies". New Straits Times , p. F9.
· Renditions Autumn 1992. No. 38. "Special issue on Twentieth Century Memoirs. Reminiscences by well-known literary figures, including Zhu Ziqing, Ba Jin, Lao She and Wang Xiyan."
Films[edit]
· Return from Silence: Five prominent and controversial Chinese writers speak on their roles in the modernization of China. (1 hour video cassette available) — The life and work of five esteemed Chinese writers whose modern classics shaped China's past: Ba Jin, Mao Dun, Ding Ling, Cao Yu, and Ai Qing. Produced by Chung-wen Shih, George Washington University, 1982.
Notes[edit]
1. ^
2. ^ Jaroslav Průšek and Zbigniew Słupski, eds., Dictionary of Oriental Literatures: East Asia (Charles Tuttle, 1978): 135-136.
3. ^ See Angel Pino, “Ba Jin as Translator,” tr. Ian MacCabe, in Peng Hsiao-yen & Isabelle Rabut (eds.), Modern China and the West: Translation and Cultural Mediation. Leiden-Boston: Brill, “East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture” (2), 2014, 28-105.
4. ^ He described Goldman as his "spiritual mother", and dedicated The General to her. See Preface, The General, and Olga Lang, Pa Chin and His Writings: Chinese Youth Between the Wars (Harvard University Press, 1967).
· Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? Yes, they are,
· Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? Yes, they are,
· Are the sources current? Yes, they are,
· Are the sources written by a diverse spectrum of authors? Do they include historically marginalized individuals where possible? Yes, they are, Yes, they are,
· Check a few links. Do they work? Yes, they are,
Sources and references evaluation
Organization
Guiding questions
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· Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? Yes, it is.
· Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors? No, it does not.
· Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic? Yes, it is. It divided by five parts to reflect the major points of the topic.
Organization evaluation
Images and Media
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· Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic? Yes, it does.
· Are images well-captioned? Yes, they are.
· Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations? Yes, they do.
· Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way? Yes, they are.
Images and media evaluation
Checking the talk page
Guiding questions
Talk:Ba Jin
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Untitled[edit]
The introduction to my copy of Family states that it was first published in 1931, so I will be changing the date to that. -- original author
i don't know how to type the tone marks for pinyin, but i think they should be listed along with the traditional and simplified characters. Doviende 03:02, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
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· What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? No.
· How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? It has the great article reated. It is a part of the Wiki Project.
· How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? Wikipedia discusses has the differ from the way we've talked about in class, it seems more official way of discussion which is not easy to understand, and the discussion in class is more easier to understand.
Talk page evaluation
Overall impressions
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· What is the article's overall status? It is a great article, which can reflect that there is a higher level than me.
· What are the article's strengths? The article looks clearly and has the great typography.
· How can the article be improved? It can add more details to describe the characters of Ba Jin. In my opinion, author can describe more personal thoughts about Ba Jin; however, maybe the Wikipedia needs more official talk, personal opinions will be too one-sided.
· How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed? It is the well-developed article and it is underdeveloped.
Overall evaluation
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