Chen Qian/Shanghai Daily news

Locals sign their names on a board at the Shanghai Book City yesterday to say farewell to writer Ba Jin, who described feudal, prerevolutionary China. — Zhang Suoqing

People from across Shanghai and China mourned Ba Jin, one of China's greatest writers who described the suffering and violence of prerevolutionary feudal family and national life.
Ba Jin assailed Confucian orthodoxy and described the ills of the society that the Communist Party of China fought to eradicate, describing them in moving detail at the family level.
Ordinary residents, writers and government officials, who love literature, were in mourning for Ba Jin, one of China's literary giants of the 20th century.
Ba Jin, who was 101, died at Huadong Hospital Monday night. He was known for groundbreaking novels that assailed the feudal Chinese family structure. He contrasted Confucian orthodoxy against individualism and social trends, the entrenched values of age and those of a younger generation.
A doctor from Huadong Hospital, where Ba Jin spent six years fighting tumors, Parkinson's disease and other ailments, said that local writers and members of the Shanghai Writers' Association visited the hospital on Monday night.
"So many people came to our hospital on Monday and yesterday to say goodbye to him," said the doctor surnamed Xu.
At one of Ba Jin's former residences on Huaihai Road M., neighbors said the son of Zhou Suofei, Ba Jin's good friend, came to bow in front of the house.
The Zhou couple lived downstairs while Ba Jin lived on the third floor of the house in 1937.
Neighbors of his another residence on Wukang Road, where Ba Jin's daughter now lives, said many friends sent floral baskets yesterday morning.
Shanghai Book City prepared a board for readers to leave their words of mourning as well as a counter of Ba Jin's works.
"Grandpa Ba Jin, you will forever live in our hearts," wrote a 17-year-old student Yang Huiying.
Another reader surnamed Wang, 78, was choosing Ba Jin's works.
"I like his works and regret his death," Wang said.