Journey to the West (Chinese: 西遊記; pinyin: Xīyóu Jì) is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng’en. It is regarded as one of the great Chinese novels, and has been described as arguably the most popular literary work in East Asia. It is widely known in English-speaking countries through Arthur Waley’s 1942 abridged translation, Monkey. The novel is a fictionalized and fantastic account of the pilgrimage of the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who journeyed to India in the 7th century AD to seek out and collect Buddhist scriptures (sūtras). The novel retains the broad outline of Xuanzang’s own account, Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, but embellishes it with fantasy elements from folk tales and the author’s invention. In the story, the Buddha tasks the monk Tang Sanzang (or “Tripitaka”), with…
I first came across this book over a decade ago. The first time I read it, I spent a year with a translation I had found in .pdf form on the internet. The second time I took about the same amount of time with the four volume annotated and edited translation by Anthony C. Yu, which allowed for a much greater depth of understanding, for myself a lifelong English speaker, will very little (essentially illiterate) in Chinese. I hope it sparks some interest.
Thanks for sharing! What do you like about it? I was actually working on a library exhibit for this recently ;)
A Korean Odyssey on Netflix is an adaptation of this book.
There’s also a sweet Stephen Chow film called A Journey to the West which is pure fictional action comedy.