Journey to the West 001: Introduction

A brief introduction to Journey to the West, the next novel we’ll cover.

Transcript

Welcome to the Chinese Lore Podcast, where I retell classic Chinese stories in English. This is episode 1 of Journey to the West.

Alright, I’ve been getting requests for Journey to the West ever since I started doing this podcast 10 years ago, so strap yourselves in. The next couple years will be filled with demons of the week, a parade of deus ex machina, and lots and lots of monkey business as we dive into this classic Chinese novel. But before we get into it, I want to offer a brief introduction about the novel.

Journey to the West was published in the late 16th century by Wu (2) Cheng’en (2,1), a scholar and official who lived during the Ming Dynasty. The novel takes its inspiration from the real-life journey to the West of a 7th-century Chinese Buddhist monk named Xuanzang (2,4). This Xuanzang is known for making a 16-year journey to India during the mid-600s. He brought back hundreds of Sanskrit Buddhist texts, some of which he translated in the later part of his life. This was a major contribution to the development of Chinese Buddhism.

The Journey to the West uses Xuanzang’s journey as the seed for its plot, and adds numerous religious and supernatural elements, like giving him disciples with magical powers and throwing demons of every kind in his way. What emerges is a mix of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Chinese mythology and folklore. The book has become one of the most famous and popular entries in Chinese literature, both within and beyond China. It has spawned countless adaptations and spinoffs in the form of books, TV shows, movies, and video games.

Honestly, I think my most vivid memories of Journey to the West is not reading the novel, but watching the 1986 TV show, which for me is still the canonical TV adaptation. And the opening score of that show and the song that played over the end credits became classics in the history of Chinese popular music. Also, one of the lesser known spinoffs of the novel, but one of my favorites, is a book published back in the 1980s called the New Journey to the West. In that fish-out-of-water tale, some of the main characters from the original novel head to the contemporary West and enroll at the University of Massachusetts at Boston on a mission to learn something about this strange new land called America. As a 7-year-old growing up in a China that was still just opening up to the West at the time, the scenes and places described in that book probably sounded as fantastical as some of the locales in the original novel.

I also want to take a few minutes and tell you a little something about the author of the novel, Wu (2) Cheng’en (2,1). He was born around 1504 in present-day Jiangsu Province. His father was a merchant but had great aspirations for his son, which was reflected in Wu Cheng’en’s name. Cheng’en means to receive kindness, and in this case, it was an expression of his father’s hope that his son would become a great scholar, place highly on the national exam through which candidates for government offices were selected, and thus receive the emperor’s kindness in the form of a civil service position.

During his youth, it seemed like Wu Cheng’en was on the fast track to realizing his father’s dreams. He was said to be a very studious young man who enjoyed literature, the arts, and other gentlemanly pursuits, though he also liked to read books about gods, fairies, and demons. A well-known scholar of the time said that Wu Cheng’en was talented enough to quote, “read all the books under heaven” and even gave him half of the books in his own collection.

When he was 23, Wu Cheng’en also caught the eye of a local official, who married his granddaughter to him. Two years later, Wu Cheng’en went to a school specifically for scholars with civil-service aspirations to study and was much praised by the official who established that school.

However, despite all his great expectations, when he took the national exam for the first time, at the age of 27, he failed to place among the candidates eligible for government office. Three years later, he tried again, and again failed to place. The same script played out again three years later.

By this point, he was 33, and he took a break from taking tests for a while. He was obviously not idle during this time, because five years later, in 1542, he finished the first draft of Journey to the West. Seven years after that, he went to a different school to continue his studies in hopes of placing on the national exam.

In the year 1550, at the age of 46, he finally placed among the eligible candidates for office. But when he went to the capital to await his appointment, he was told that there was no position for him. So once again, his dreams of government office were dashed.

Six years later, he was in his 50s, had an old mother to take care of, and not a whole lot of income to lean on. Fortunately for him, one of his acquaintances who was a court official pulled some strings and got him a county magistrate position. It wasn’t exactly high office, but Wu Cheng’en was finally an official and in his role, he had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the top scholars of his day.

The good times didn’t last long, though. Just two years later, he was accused of corruption and embezzlement. He was ultimately cleared, but the experience left him disillusioned with politics and he resigned his post and returned to his ancestral home.

This was around the year 1570, and Wu Cheng’en was in his mid-60s. It was now that he turned his full attention back to Journey to the West, which he had initially drafted almost three decades earlier. Three years later, he finished his work, but the novel won’t actually be published until around the year 1592, about a decade after Wu Cheng’en’s death. So for all the novel’s subsequent popularity, its author never reaped any financial reward from it. Instead, Wu Cheng’en scratched out a living in his final years by trading on his literary skills. He also wrote a number of other works of prose and poetry, though most of those have been lost. He died in the year 1582, nearing the age of 80.

When Journey to the West was published, it was done anonymously, and that’s how it remained for almost 300 years. But in the early 20th century, scholars analyzed the text and historical records, and attributed the work to Wu Cheng’en. Now, like many other works of classic Chinese literature, there are some disputes about the veracity of this attribution. But it’s commonly accepted today that Wu Cheng’en is the most likely author.

Since its initial publication, Journey to the West has seen numerous editions. There were six known editions in the Ming Dynasty and seven in the ensuing Qing Dynasty. Then, later in the Qing Dynasty, it became translated into various Western languages. If you’re interested in reading a translated version of the novel, I understand that the version by Anthony C. Yu is considered the best. I admit, I haven’t really read that translation. From a cursory skim, it seems fine enough, though there are some spots where one can take issue with the specific translation. Also, if you are so inclined, I would recommend that 1986 TV adaptation. There’s a version on YouTube with English subtitles, and I’ve posted a link to it with the transcript for this episode on the Chineselore.com website. You’ll laugh at the hilariously bad special effects, but I, and probably every Chinese person my age, love the show for its characters, its action, and its fine monkey acting.

Alright, I think that gives us enough background to set us up for our journey through Journey to the West. We’ll dive into the story next time on the Chinese Lore Podcast. Thanks for listening.

Music in This Episode

“Luỹ Tre Xanh Ngát Đầu Làng (Guzheng) – Vietnam BGM” by VPRODMUSIC_Asia_BGM

“Journey to the West” according to ChatGPT

As part of my experimentation with ChatGPT, I feed it the script for each episode, ask it to summarize the episode with an image, and post the first picture that it generates. Here’s ChatGPT’s response for this episode.

ChatGPT: Here is an illustration summarizing the first episode of the Journey to the West podcast. The painting captures the Monkey King in his iconic attire, surrounded by symbolic elements like Xuanzang on a distant mountain path, mythical creatures, and a serene river, all reflecting the themes of adventure, spirituality, and storytelling.

Journey to the West 001: Introduction