“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.”

—  Ba Jin

Preface to The Autumn in the Spring (May 1932)
Context: 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."

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Ba Jin 36
Chinese novelist 1904–2005

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