The original title was Turbulent Stream (激流 Jīliú), but changed after Ba Jin released it as a single volume.

In her Editor's Note, Lang discusses the history of the text, pointing out that certain passages, the anarchist elements, had been deleted from the 1958 Foreign Languages Press edition.

In the Sidney Shapiro translation Wu Yu is not mentioned by name; instead he is referred to as "the man who wrote that article, 'Cannibal Confucian Morality' in the New Youth magazine"[8] Family mentions many of the books and authors which inflamed the young protagonists, giving a vivid picture of intellectual life in a provincial capital.

Where the earlier work is fatalistic and told with philosophical allegory, however, the young heroes of Family leaves home to pursue lives of worldly engagement.

[3] Diana Lary of the University of British Columbia stated that "Sadly, there is no good translation of the novels in English", referring to the entire Turbulent Stream trilogy.