Little Fish Leap Over the Dragon Gate

Author: Jin Jin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: Re-reading Jin Jin's fairy tales of various themes is like meeting his pure, hardworking, humorous, and shy figure. Jin Jin (1915–1989) was born in a remote fishing village in Shangyu County, Zhejiang. From a young age, he worked alongside his father in the fields and by the seashore. He attended a private school for four years. At the age of 12, he went to Shanghai as an apprentice, never imagining that he would have a connection with children's literature. In the 1930s, he sustained himself by doing temporary jobs while treating the library as his "school." He borrowed and read extensively from Chinese and foreign literary classics, acquiring much literary knowledge and becoming an avid lover of literature. He also tried writing himself, constantly submitting his work to newspapers, but none were published. Once, the News Daily published one of his humorous stories titled "Chinese People Don’t Have Buttocks," which was a satire on buying foreign goods. In 1935, he joined the Children’s Daily in Shanghai, initially collecting subscription fees before becoming an assistant editor. This is when he developed an interest in children’s literature. In 1937, his fairy tale "The Rise and Fall of the Eagle and the Kite" was published in Little Friends. When the war broke out, he moved to Chongqing and worked as a teacher in a rural orphanage for children, a period that deeply impacted him. He wrote his own teaching materials, interacted with the children, and learned about their tragic backgrounds, realizing how much love and education poor children needed. This made him eager to write about them. In 1945, he published his works under the pen name Jin Jin. After 1946, due to the circumstances of the time, he wrote more satirical poems, essays, and fairy tales, publishing the fairy tale collection Red Mask and the children’s poetry collection The Life of Little Mao. He dedicated himself entirely to children’s literature starting in 1949. He served as a scriptwriter for animated films at the Northeast and Shanghai Film Studios, and as the deputy head of the Children’s Literature Group of the Chinese Writers' Association. From 1963 onwards, he organized and edited the Children’s Literature magazine, contributing to the development of contemporary children’s literature in China. Jin Jin emphasized immersing himself in life. He often visited nearby primary schools to make friends with the children. In 1957, he settled in Tianmu Mountain in Lin’an County, Zhejiang, for five years, spending two of them in a rural household with only three orphans. He lived with them day and night, spending three years through the difficult period with the local villagers and children, building strong bonds with them. His passion and sense of responsibility for children’s literature deeply moved the local cadres and masses. His fairy tales often celebrate and inspire goodness, bravery, and wisdom, while satirizing and condemning cunning, deceit, and malice. Even in short stories, he often uses beautiful imagery and colloquial language to praise the noble hearts of children. He often said, "I can write because the life I know pushes me to do so. Even fairy tales are based on life, with fantasy arising from it. Without life, it’s like someone trying to move forward but having no path, feeling lost." Throughout his life, Jin Jin wrote over 100 fairy tales, as well as more than two million words of novels, essays, poems, and literary theories. Yan Xueqin