The unreasonable social system, the marriage without freedom, the yoke of traditional ideas, and the family autocracy, destroyed we don't know how many young souls. In my twenty eight years, I already had it accumulated so many, so many shadows. In that autumn smile, in that smiling which was the same as crying, I saw the young people's corpses in the whole past generation. It was as if I heard a painful sound saying: "This must be ended." " - Meaning and context.">
Preface to The Autumn in the Spring (May 1932)
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The unreasonable social system, the marriage without freedom, the yoke of traditional ideas, and the family autocracy, destroyed we don't know how many young souls. In my twenty eight years, I already had it accumulated so many, so many shadows. In that autumn smile, in that smiling which was the same as crying, I saw the young people's corpses in the whole past generation. It was as if I heard a painful sound saying: "This must be ended."

— Ba Jin

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The unreasonable social system, the marriage without freedom, the yoke of traditional ideas, and the family autocracy, destroyed we don't know how many young souls. In my twenty eight years, I already had it accumulated so many, so many shadows. In that autumn smile, in that smiling which was the same as crying, I saw the young people's corpses in the whole past generation. It was as if I heard a painful sound saying: "This must be ended." " in the context of "Preface to The Autumn in the Spring (May 1932)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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.