This Day, That Year: April 2

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

On April 2, 1982, Ba Jin, one of China's most acclaimed writers, was awarded the Dante International Prize. The annual literary prize honors the memory of the great Italian poet, Dante.

Ba Jin, originally named Li Yaotang, was born in Chengdu, Sichuan province.

Early in life he became a committed socialist. In 1929, he started writing in France. His first novel was called Destruction.

Among his literary works amounting to 13 million Chinese characters, Ba Jin was best known for his trilogy Torrent (Jiliu), which was written between 1931 and 1940 and included three semi-autobiographical novels.

The three novels, namely The Family, The Spring and The Autumn, hit a chord with China's youth at the time and remained popular throughout the century.

The novels attacked the traditional Chinese family structure and depicted the struggles and tragedies, loves and hatreds of the young generation in a saga of familial decline.

In 1975 Ba Jin was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature.

An item from June 11, 1984, showed Ba Jin speaking at the 47th conference of the International Pen Center in Tokyo.

For his many contributions to Chinese literature, he was awarded a Special Fukuoka Asian Commemorative Prize in 1990.

The revered writer died of cancer, at the age of 101, in Shanghai in 2005.

A number of Chinese writers have achieved success in the West.

In 2012, author Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in literature.

The same year, Hao Jingfang took the Hugo Award following Liu Cixin, the first Chinese winner of the award, in 2015.