西游记 Journey to the West

A thousand and three hundred years ago a Buddhist monk named Xuan Zang made arduous travels and brought back Buddhist scriptures from India. He left after him Records of the Western World in Tang Dynasty that recorded his journey. In the Ming Dynasty, however, his journey was evolved into a wondrous book known to every household. It is Journey to the West.

The novel is a fictionalized account of the mythologized legends around the Buddhist monk Xuanzang's pilgrimage to India during the Tang dynasty in order to obtain Buddhist religious texts called sutras. The Bodhisattva Guanyin, on instruction from the Buddha, gives this task to the monk and his three protectors in the form of disciples — namely Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing — together with a dragon prince who acts as Xuanzang's horse mount. These four characters have agreed to help Xuanzang as atonement for past sins.

In the story of a pilgrimage for scriptures, not the Monk of Tang the mentor, but the Monkey is the leading character.

As the Monkey beats the White Bone Demon and borrows the Palm Fan to conquer different evil spirits, he conquers the readers. In him the public see their hope. He is loyal and righteous and always does his best to champion the oppressed and help the poor. He is staunch and unswerving and faithful to his mentor. He is the saviour in people's mind.

What is more praiseworthy is that the Monkey seeks an absolute freedom. He loves his care－free life in the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. He cancels the Book of Life and Death in the hell. He wreaks havoc in the Heavenly Palace and frightens the Jade Emperor in it. As the symbol of authority and order, the Buddha puts a tight band around his head so that he can not get free. But as the scripture is acquired and he himself has become a Buddha, the Monkey demands his mentor to take off the band and smash it. Obviously, what the Monkey looks after is not truth in books, but freedom in the world.

The Monkey's subjectivist attitude reflects the eternal ideal of human kind. His fellow Pigsy may be accepted by the reader in another way. Pigsy has joined the pilgrimage and at the same time he cannot resist the temptation of secular desires, so that he often makes him a laughing stock. In him one sees foibles in human nature.

The sincere and resolute but weak and incompetent mentor Monk of Tang should lead three mischievous disciples in a pilgrimage for scriptures. This endows the whole story an inherent comic nature. When the book was written, joking literature was prosperous. That gives account for the colourful humorous language in the Journey to the West.

Free imagination, light－toned narration, interweaving of humanity, divinity and animality, all these invest in the Journey to the West an open and liberal way of thinking that encompasses everything in the past, present and future, in the world and Heaven.

Journey to the West presents an enchanting world where fantasies and reality inseparably blend.

Some scholars propose that the book satirizes the effete Chinese government at the time. Journey to the West has a strong background in Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology and value systems; the pantheon of Taoist immortals and Buddhist bodhisattvas is still reflective of some Chinese folk religious beliefs today.