How to evaluate Bai Jiaxuan in the novel White Deer Plain

Bai Jiaxuan is a complex characterization, a combination of contradictions. On the one hand, Bai Jiaxuan embodies the spirit of toughness, perseverance, integrity, benevolence and righteousness; on the other hand, he also embodies the reaction and conservatism of traditional Chinese moral norms.

The White Deer Plains is the masterpiece of writer Chen Zhongshi, a long novel*** of more than 500,000 words, which took Chen Zhongshi six years to complete.

White Deer Plains epitomizes the village of White Deer on the White Deer Plain in the Guanzhong region of Shaanxi Province, and shows the historical changes that took place from the end of the Qing Dynasty to the 1970s and 1980s over a period of more than half a century through the story of the feuds and disputes between the grandchildren of the two major families, the White and Deer surnames.

In 1997, White Deer Plains won China's fourth Mao Dun Literature Prize. The novel has also been adapted into a variety of art forms, including a movie of the same name, a TV series, a play, a dance drama, and a Qin opera.

Author: Chen Zhongshi, born in 1942 in Baqiao District, Xi'an City, published his prose debut in early 1965, joined the Chinese Writers' Association in 1979, and has published more than 40 works, including three volumes of Chen Zhongshi's Selected Novels, seven volumes of Chen Zhongshi's Collected Essays, and a collection of essays, Farewell to the White Dove.