I felt a joy in my heart, which seemed filled with love, love for the sun, the snow, the wind and the hills, love for everything around me. It was in this mood that I walked down the snow-covered path dotted with black footprints. Further down the footprints mingled and made dirty little puddles. I picked my way over the thickest snow because I loved the crunching of snow underfoot. With the sunlight pouring down and a breeze in my face I felt that balmy spring was coming to meet me." - Meaning and context.">
"When the Snow Melted" [Hua-Hsueh Ti Jih-Tzu] (1962), as translated by Tang Sheng at Words Without Borders
โ€œ

I felt a joy in my heart, which seemed filled with love, love for the sun, the snow, the wind and the hills, love for everything around me. It was in this mood that I walked down the snow-covered path dotted with black footprints. Further down the footprints mingled and made dirty little puddles. I picked my way over the thickest snow because I loved the crunching of snow underfoot. With the sunlight pouring down and a breeze in my face I felt that balmy spring was coming to meet me.

— Ba Jin

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I felt a joy in my heart, which seemed filled with love, love for the sun, the snow, the wind and the hills, love for everything around me. It was in this mood that I walked down the snow-covered path dotted with black footprints. Further down the footprints mingled and made dirty little puddles. I picked my way over the thickest snow because I loved the crunching of snow underfoot. With the sunlight pouring down and a breeze in my face I felt that balmy spring was coming to meet me." in the context of ""When the Snow Melted" [Hua-Hsueh Ti Jih-Tzu] (1962), as translated by Tang Sheng at Words Without Borders" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "Ba Jin" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Ba Jin

About Ba Jin

Li Yaotang ๆŽๅฐงๆฃ  (or Li Feigan; Zi: ่Šพ็”˜) (November 25 1904 โ€“ October 17 2005) was a Chinese writer and anarchist; he was most famous under his pen name of Ba Jin (ๅทด้‡‘, also written Pa Chin). He created this pseudonym in 1929 from the first syllable of Bakunin and of the last syllable of Kropotkin, the famous Russian anarchists.