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Reading his articles, thinking about his actions, cherishing his virtues is a spiritual dialogue close to Ba Jin's rich spiritual world. As the backbone of the Ba Jin Research Society and the executive deputy director of Ba Jin's former residence, Zhou Limin has very close ties with Ba Jin's works and Ba Jin's family. He has mastered many secret first-hand materials. After years of accumulation, he finally wrote "The Flowers of Gantang". The book reveals for the first time many little-known details and precious moments about Ba Jin's reading, collecting, writing and interacting with friends, truly restoring Ba Jin's ideological tendencies in different periods. The content covered is very wide, from national events to literary trends, and even personal emotions, etc. It is very helpful for us to understand that era and the figures who were active in that era.

How lucky it is for a young person to have such teachers who care and support him, even if they scold him, on his way of growing up. No wonder people like Li Liewen, Xiao Jun, Xiao Hong, and Huang Yuan will never forget Lu Xun in their lives. Of course, there is Ba Jin. Ba Jin and Li Liewen also had a direct relationship with Lu Xun from their acquaintance to each other. The first time they met was in 1933, when Li Liewen asked Ba Jin to write for "Declaration·Free Talk", and the two gradually became friends. Ba Jin published "journey essays" such as "Xue Juexian", "Traveling to the Buddhist Country", "Third-Class Car" and other "journey essays" in "Shenbao·Free Talk". Later, Li edited "Zhongliu", and many of Ba Jin's self-narrative articles included in "Brief" were published in this publication, such as "My Childhood", "My Sirs", "My Road", "Answer to a Young Friend from the North", "Answer to a "Strange Child"", etc. However, what really brought this group of young writers together was Lu Xun's huge spiritual appeal: "At that time, several acquaintances were editing literary magazines. After Writers (edited by Meng Shihuan), Translation (edited by Huang Yuan), and Wenji Monthly (edited by Jin Yi), the bimonthly magazine Zhongliu, edited by Lie Wen, was also launched.

Who said that literary criticism must be written with a frown on one's brows, and read like one must take medicine? The long and short "mini-comments" not only delve into the details of the text, but also take a panoramic view of the literary world, talking about Huang Yongyu's wonderful "The Wandering Man of Wuchou River", Wei Wei's "Flying Time" like a breeze, gossiping about the Mao Dun Literary Award, and asking about the "third way" of literary criticism... The 35 articles strive to reshape the vitality of literary criticism with vivid words.

This book is part of the "Silverfish Collection". As the title suggests, the content of the book is "gossip about old stories of literati", and the focus is on the "old school", involving senior scholars including Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, Chen Yinke, Ba Jin, Wen Yiduo, Lao She, etc. The author talks about old things, which is interesting but not gossipy. He starts from the three parts of "Classmate Boy", "This is Life" and "Self-Esteem" respectively, and interprets and develops it strictly according to the historical materials themselves. Therefore, all historical materials have their sources indicated, and there is no compilation or conjecture. Talking about old things, but also discovering new ideas, especially the diverse aspects of literati that have not been paid attention to by the academic community in the past, and the literary world that has been ignored. The purpose of this book is to draw on past events to provide examples for today's people to learn from.