Ba Jin started his random column in Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao at the end of 1978. In February, he wrote the first article "Talking about Homecoming" from 1978 to 1, and on August 20th, he finished the last article from 1986, the first158. For Ba Jin, who is 80 years old, completing this 420,000-word prose masterpiece not only means the hardships, but also an old man's ruthless torture of his own mind, and a kind of self-regret that gradually deepens with huge inner conflicts.

Ba Jin's starting point for writing "Random thoughts" is very clear, that is, personal reflection on the "Cultural Revolution", as he said in his new book "Random thoughts" written later: "I picked up a pen, and although I contacted various topics and discussed various things, my thoughts were always spinning. This is the so-called" Cultural Revolution "that caused ten years of catastrophe. ..... After living in the' cowshed' for ten years, I have the responsibility to expose that thrilling big scam so that future generations will not suffer from it again. " In Random Thoughts, he truly recorded the physical and mental devastation brought to him and his family and friends by the Cultural Revolution (such as the famous touching chapters Xiao Shan and Comrade Lao She). ), revealing that the vicious power and influence of the Cultural Revolution did not disappear with its end (such as "poison disease", etc. ), and he constantly struggled with ghosts in nightmares. The whole "Random Thoughts" can actually be regarded as a personal "Cultural Revolution" museum built by Ba Jin with paper and pen.

The uniqueness and profundity of Random Thoughts lies in that the reflection on the Cultural Revolution was combined with Ba Jin's Thousand Regrets from the beginning, instead of simply putting all the blame on the Gang of Four like many victims of the Cultural Revolution, so they thought that smashing the Gang of Four would solve all the problems. Ba Jin's introspection contains greater worries about history and the future. This kind of reflection is not completed at once in random thoughts, but has gone through a gradual and in-depth process. It turns out that in the comedy "A Peach Blossom", Ba Jin asked himself and answered: "I often think that we can't just blame Lin Biao, we can only blame the Gang of Four, and we have to blame ourselves! Lin Biao and the Gang of Four didn't prosper until we "ate" that set of feudal commodities ourselves. Otherwise, how can a casual' command' ruin people? " Then, he told a story that bothered him all his life, that is, when he was a child, he saw the prisoner being beaten in his father's yamen and thanked the magistrate. This childhood impression first appeared in his first novel Death, and now it appears again, becoming the whole image throughout the whole book Random Thoughts. In the following chapters, Ba Jin constantly reflects on the connection between his "Cultural Revolution" experience and slave consciousness. He found that in the early days of the "Cultural Revolution", like a slave, he willingly bowed his head and repented, and took the initiative to reform his thoughts. In "One Dream in Ten Years", he painfully shouted such self-condemnation: "Slave, I used to think that I had nothing to do with this word, but I was obviously a slave for ten years! ..... I am a slave at heart, and I am a dead-set spiritual slave. This discovery makes me sad! I am struggling in my heart, and I feel that slave philosophy binds me like a chain. I am not myself. "

This painful confession deepened the introspection in random thoughts. Ba Jin rediscovered his life path with great courage, so he made another self-discovery in "Remembering the Non-British Brothers": "Only in the anti-Hu Feng and anti-Rightist movements did I write such irresponsible remarks, saying that it was to draw a line, not to throw stones into the well?" The following "In Memory of Hu Feng" is his last and most emotional essay. In this article, he analyzed in detail the painful feelings of writing articles at will in order to keep his sanity in the anti-Hu Feng movement. At this time, the emotion of regret caused him an inner pain that could not be resolved, which made him feel sick and humiliated. Obviously, what Ba Jin regrets here is not only the slave consciousness. The so-called slave consciousness is still based on the premise of believing that you are guilty, and pinning the hope of self-help on the savior is essentially a manifestation of ignorance. Ba Jin's reflection on some of his actions in the 1950s is to explore a deeper ideological level: that is, under the rule of the unconstrained authoritative order, he was forced to sacrifice justice and friends to save himself, which was actually an accomplice of the unconstrained authoritative order. But behind this behavior, he knew right from wrong, so his conscience would suffer for it, and as a result, he was in an increasingly desperate living environment and great pain of physical and mental difficulties. He finally lost his sober will bit by bit and gave up his consciousness and ability of independent thinking as a modern intellectual, which fundamentally violated the free spirit and humanistic ideal that he once regarded as life. This is also the psychological basis for him to become a spiritual slave during the Cultural Revolution.

This can't help but remind people of the "Chueh-hsin character" created by Ba Jin in the trilogy "Riptide": a character who voluntarily gives up his personality and self-awareness and constantly compromises under the pressure of the environment. This was originally what Ba Jin attacked in the May 4th Movement from the standpoint of advocating independent personality and free spirit. He used to be a modern intellectual who took the May 4th spirit as the starting point of his life exploration, but after a catastrophe, he found himself with a terrible "new personality", which was really heartbreaking for him. Thus, from the introspection of his participation in criticizing Ling Ke's drama "The City that Never Sleeps"/the random thoughts in the seventh article "Obedience Literature" of KLOC-0/965, and finally to the abuse in the anti-Hu Feng movement, Ba Jin struggled to complete a long self-discovery and liquidation from shallow to deep. Its significance lies not only in Ba Jin's personal reflection, because his own mental journey revealed very typically reflects the cultural mentality experienced by intellectuals in modern China. Especially after the 1950s, the causes of the tragedy of a whole generation of intellectuals undoubtedly included that they gradually gave up their criticism of the authoritative order and their defense of the May 4th spiritual tradition under the pressure of the environment, and this abandonment behavior and subsequent constant compromise. Bowing to the strong pressure, it finally branded the "Chueh-hsin character" in the spiritual world of a generation.

When Ba Jin exposed the deep contents of all these hidden personal and national disasters with the courage to open the wound, he actually finished criticizing himself and the whole intellectual group for betraying the May 4th spirit. What really gives people strength and encouragement is that it puts forward the conscience and responsibility that intellectuals should adhere to and advocates returning to the spirit of the May 4th Movement. For example, at the beginning, Ba Jin repeatedly proved the importance of independent thinking to writers by talking about the freedom of creation (such as "obeying literature", "the will of officials", "the role of literature" and "whether to formulate a literary law". ), but in his later Random Thoughts on Exploration, he clearly pointed out that there is no "independent thinking" or "independent thinking", and only those who insist on "independent thinking" are entitled to enjoy their own lives. By showing their support for "scar literature" at that time, he also directly mentioned the social responsibility of writers many times and praised the critical spirit of a new generation of writers. From the writing process of Random Thoughts, we can also see the gradual awakening of Ba Jin's realistic fighting spirit in the May 4th Movement. He quoted Zhao Dan's last words: "For me, there is nothing to be afraid of". ("Fearless") This renewed courage enabled him to maintain a vigilant and critical attitude towards various real social problems and mercilessly exposed the feudal consciousness remaining in the contemporary social form. Although psychologically, he experienced indomitable and lingering ups and downs, but he finally overcame the fear left in his heart by decades of unfortunate experiences. In the last few articles, such as In the Official Residence, Museum of Cultural Revolution, Aging Twenty Years ago, and Remembering Hu Feng, the social passion of volcanic eruption was ejected from his works again. The old man really opened his mind, turned his back, shouted loudly, and reshaped the personality of the May 4th Movement with sharp social attacks. It can be said that this "will" is as heavy and profound as a "confession", which has recovered the long-lost social conscience for contemporary intellectuals in China and established the spiritual tradition of contemporary intellectuals with the bleeding soul. This is to consciously inherit the May 4th new cultural tradition, consciously become a sober critic of the real society, and use modern culture to overcome all kinds of ugly, backward and dark things in society.