Chapter 2 Xinji

The "Preface" of this book was written in July 1938 for Kaiming Bookstore in a small inn in Shanghai when the author returned to Shanghai from Guangzhou. When the bound volumes of "Fog", "Electricity" were published by Liangyou Book Company in 1936, there were fifty-six pages of "General Preface" at the front of the book, and thirty-three pages of appendices at the back of the book. They are also preserved in the rearranged version of Kaiming Bookstore.Delete them all now. "Fog" was written in Shanghai in the summer of 1931, and it was published in New China Bookstore in the winter of the same year.It was written in Shanghai at the end of 1932, and the booklet was published in 1933 by Liangyou Book Company.In December 1933, the author finished writing "Electricity" in Beijing, but the single edition of this novel was not published by Liangyou Book Company until the summer of 1935.In the booklet, there are several places marked by black dots that were deleted by the censor at the time, and were later filled in by the author in the bound edition.None of the three "prefaces" written by the author for the booklet are included in the rearranged edition of Kaiming Bookstore.But this new edition has kept them: three together, printed at the front of the bound volume.

Ba Jin March 1955