Acquisitions (95): Journey to the West

Wu Cheng'en: The Journey to the West (2012)

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Anthony C. Yu (1938-2015)

Anthony C. Yu: The Journey to the West (2012)
[BookMark, Devonport - 28/6/2023]:

The Journey to the West. Trans. Anthony C. Yu. 1977-1983. Rev. ed. Vol. 1 of 4. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Anthony C. Yu. The Journey to the West (4 vols: 1977-83)

Monkey!

I've already written quite a bit about the four (or six - depending on which tradition you follow [1]) Classic Chinese novels. They are, in approximate chronological order:

1. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms [Sānguó Yǎnyì] (14th century)
2. The Water Margin [Shui Hu Zhuan] - aka Outlaws of the Marsh - (mid-14th century)
3. Journey to the West [Xī Yóu Jì] - aka Monkey - (c.1592)
4. The Plum in the Golden Vase [Jin Ping Mei] - aka The Golden Lotus - (c.1610)
5. The Scholars [Rúlín Wàishǐ] - aka Unofficial History of the Scholars - (c.1750)
6. The Red Chamber Dream [Honglou Meng] - aka The Story of the Stone - (c.1791)

For a start, there's my essay "In Love with the Chinese Novel: A Voyage around the Hung Lou Meng" which appeared in brief 37 (2009): 10-28 (after being long-listed for the Landfall Essay Prize). This was supplemented by a post called "Classical Chinese Novels" on my blog The Imaginary Museum (22/6/2008). I also wrote a longer summary of the subject as the sixth in a series on The True Story of the Novel (22/12/2013).

As well as that, in late 2018 I wrote an "acquisitions" piece on the first two of these novels, Luo Guanzhong's Three Kingdoms and Shi Nai’an's Outlaws of the Marsh, on the occasion of their republication in new, deluxe Folio Society editions.

As you can see, it's been on my mind.

For the moment, though, I'd like to concentrate on number three in the list above, The Journey to the West, a copy of which I came across in a secondhand bookshop the other day.

Monkey (52 episodes: 1978-80)

This is probably the most familiar image of the fab four - Sandy, Monkey, Pigsy, and the monk Tripitaka (not to mention the latter's dragon-disguised-as-a-horse) - who undertake the journey west to India to locate Buddhist scriptures and bring them back to China. It comes from the Japanese TV adaptation Saiyūki which entranced all of us here down under in the early 1980s. You may even recall its earworm of a theme song:

Born from an egg
on a mountain top
The punkiest monkey
that ever popped
He knew every magic trick
under the sun
To tease the Gods
And everyone
and have some fun
Monkey magic, Monkey magic ...
& so on.

So I was very pleased to pick up a copy of volume 1 of the revised edition of Anthony C. Yu's complete translation of the entire novel. I already own his original 4-volume translation of 1977-83, but this one seems to have a greatly extended introduction, as well as updated notes and text.

Anthony C. Yu: The Journey to the West (vol. II: 2012)

Anthony C. Yu: The Journey to the West (vol. III: 2012)

Anthony C. Yu: The Journey to the West (vol. IV: 2012)

Mind you, I still need the other three volumes to complete the set, but I doubt the suspense will kill me. I have read it before. I know how it all turns out.

Arthur Waley: Monkey (1968)

So where did all this monkey business begin? Well, for English-language readers, at least, it started with Arthur Waley's 1942 translation Monkey: A Folk-Tale of China. I call it a translation, but the original novel was so heavily abridged and reworked by Waley that it would probably be more accurate to refer to it as an adaptation.

Whatever you call it, though, it caused a sensation when it first appeared. The strange, half-supernatural world of the Monkey King (aka 'Great Sage Equal of Heaven') and his fellow-pilgrims - a kind of amalgam of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Carroll's Alice - was not really assimilable to any Western genre.

Is it satirical of contemporary mores in Ming China? Yes - there's a great deal of that in the book. Is there an underlying substratum of genuine spirituality? Well, yes, most critics would agree that that's there too. Is it basically the most entertaining on-the-road story since Huckleberry Finn? Certainly it is - in Waley's version, at any rate.

Anthony C. Yu: The Monkey and the Monk (2006)

It's usually attributed to a sixteenth-century author called Wu Cheng'en. The stories his Hsi-yu Chi (or "Journey to the West") was based on long predate him, though, and had a number of folktale and dramatic incarnations before being edited into this immense "novel" - or long prose narrative, at any rate. So it's no accident that Anthony C. Yu lists no author at all at the head of his translation.

C. C. Low et al.: The Adventures of the Monkey God (4 vols: 1975)

With the exception of the above Chinese-English graphic novel adaptation, Yu was the first translator to undertake a version of the entire immense novel. His translation remains a landmark of careful scholarship, though perhaps a bit less of a page-turner than readers of Waley's lively abridgement may have led non-Chinese speaking readers (such as myself) to expect.

W. J. F. Jenner: Journey to the West (3 vols: 1982)

This beautifully-presented - albeit somewhat zanily translated - Beijing Foreign Languages Press edition also purports to be a complete version of the novel. While I hugely enjoyed reading it, it lacks annotations, and it would probably be unwise to trust it overmuch if you have the alternative of consulting Yu's immense labour of love.

For sheer entertainment value, though, Jenner runs Waley a close second. And, given the immense repetitiveness of the novel in its complete form, that's really quite a tribute.

All of which brings us to some of the other manifestations of Monkey in popular culture.

The New Legends of Monkey (20 episodes: 2018-2020)

As well as innumerable feature films, stage plays, comics and other graphic adaptations, there are also a number of TV series, among them the classic Japanese Saiyūki, mentioned above, but also the Australasian-produced New Legends of Monkey, which attempts to update the story for a new generation of kids.

Xuanzang (602-664)

But wait - there's more. Though it may sound like one complication too many, it's important to point out that the whole story is actually based on truth. There was indeed a 7th-century monk, Xuanzang, who undertook a long trek westwards to collect Buddhist texts, and even wrote a travelogue, The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, about his journey to India and back in 629–645.

He's the original for Tang Sanzang, the central character in the novel, as Arthur Waley explains in the book below. However, where the original Xuanzang was a wise and experienced traveller, his fictional counterpart (called "Tripitaka" by Waley) is depicted as a naive young monk with little power of discernment, who's constantly upsetting the plans of the wily Monkey.

Arthur Waley: The Real Tripitaka (1952)

As for Sun Wukong, the Monkey King himself, his origins are somewhat more obscure. His resemblance to the monkey god Hanuman from the Sanskrit epic Ramayana is unmistakable. However:

Lu Xun pointed out there is no proof that the Ramayana has been translated into Chinese or was accessible to Wu Cheng'en. Instead, Lu Xun suggested the 9th Century Chinese deity Wuzhiqi, who appears as a sibling of Sun Wukong in older Yuan Dynasty stories, as another potential inspiration.

Sun Wukong may have also been influenced by local folk religion from Fuzhou province, where monkey gods were worshipped long before the novel. This included the three Monkey Saints of Lin Shui Palace, who were once fiends, who were subdued by the goddess Chen Jinggu ... The two traditional mainstream religions practiced in Fuzhou are Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. Traditionally, many people practice both religions simultaneously. However, the roots of local religion dated back many years before institutionalization of these traditions.

- Wikipedia

Certainly this fusion of Daoist and Buddhist deities and traditions is one of the most striking aspects of the novel - to a Western reader, at any rate.

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[1] C. T. Hsia's The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (1968) claims that the six listed above "remain the most beloved novels among the Chinese." However, as Wikipedia reminds us:

The Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Water Margin and The Plum in the Golden Vase were grouped by publishers in the early Qing ... as Four Masterworks. Because of its explicit descriptions of sex, The Plum in the Golden Vase was banned for most of its existence. Despite this, Lu Xun, like many if not most scholars and writers, places it among the top Chinese novels. Several Western reference works consider Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber as China's Four Great Classical Novels.

Rua Yai City Pillar Shrine in Suphan Buri, Thailand (1952)

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Wu Cheng'en (c.1500-1582)

Journey to the West [Hsi-yu Chi]
(c.1592)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Translations:


1. Wu Ch’êng-Ên. Monkey: A Folk-Tale of China. Trans. Arthur Waley (1942)
   • Wu Ch’êng-Ên. Monkey. Trans. Arthur Waley. 1942. Illustrated by Duncan Grant. London: The Folio Society, 1968.
   • Wu Ch’êng-Ên. Monkey. Trans. Arthur Waley. 1942. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
   • Wu Ch’êng-Ên. Dear Monkey. Trans. Arthur Waley. Abridged by Alison Waley. Illustrated by Georgette Boner. 1947. London & Glasgow: Blackie, 1973.
2. C. C. Low & Associates. The Adventures of the Monkey God. 4 vols (1975)
   • Low, C. C. & Associates. The Adventures of the Monkey God. Pictorial Stories of Chinese Classics. Trans. C. C. Low & Associates. 4 vols. 1975. Singapore: Canfonian Pte Ltd., 1989.
3. Anthony C. Yu. The Journey to the West. 4 vols (1977-1983; 2012)
   • The Journey to the West. Trans. Anthony C. Yu. 4 vols. 1977-1983. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, 1982, 1980, 1984.
   • The Monkey and the Monk. Abridged by Anthony C. Yu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
   • The Journey to the West. Trans. Anthony C. Yu. 1977-1983. Rev. ed. Vol. 1 of 4. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
4. Tung Yueh. Hsi-yu pu. Tower of Myriad Mirrors. Trans. Shuen-fu Lin & Larry J. Schultz (1978)
   • Tung Yueh. Hsi-yu pu. Tower of Myriad Mirrors: A Supplement to Journey to the West. Trans. Shuen-fu Lin & Larry J. Schultz. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1978.
5. Excerpts from Three Classical Chinese Novels. Trans. Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang (1981)
   • Excerpts from Three Classical Chinese Novels: The Three Kingdoms, Pilgrimage to the West & Flowers in the Mirror. Trans. Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang. Beijing: Panda Books, 1981.
6. Wu Cheng’en. Journey to the West. Trans. W. J. F. Jenner (1982)
   • Wu Cheng’en. Journey to the West. Trans. W. J. F. Jenner. 1982. 3 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990.
7. Wu Cheng’en. Monkey King: Journey to the West. Trans. Julia Lovell. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2021.



Julia Lovell, trans.: Monkey King: Journey to the West (2021)


Miscellaneous:


8. Monkey [“Saiyūki”]: Season One: Episodes 1-13, based on the novel by Wu Ch’eng-en – with Masaaki Sakai, Masako Natsume, Shiro Kishibe, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tonpei Hidari, Shunji Fujimura – (Japan: Nippon TV, 1978). 4-DVD set.
9. Monkey [“Saiyūki”]: Season One: Episodes 14-26, based on the novel by Wu Ch’eng-en – with Masaaki Sakai, Masako Natsume, Shiro Kishibe, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tonpei Hidari, Shunji Fujimura – (Japan: Nippon TV, 1978). 4-DVD set.
10. Monkey [“Saiyūki”]: Season Two: Episodes 27-39, based on the novel by Wu Ch’eng-en – with Masaaki Sakai, Masako Natsume, Shiro Kishibe, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tonpei Hidari, Shunji Fujimura – (Japan: Nippon TV, 1979). 4-DVD set.
11. Monkey [“Saiyūki”]: Season Two: Episodes 40-52, based on the novel by Wu Ch’eng-en – with Masaaki Sakai, Masako Natsume, Shiro Kishibe, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tonpei Hidari, Shunji Fujimura – (Japan: Nippon TV, 1980). 4-DVD set.
12. Pisu, Silverio. The Ape. Illustrated by Milo Manara. New York: Catalan Communications, 1986.
13. Journey to the West Playing Cards. Shandong: Heze Printing House, n.d.



Silverio Pisu & Milo Manara: The Ape (1986)


Secondary:


14. Dudbridge, Glen. The Hsi-Yu-Chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
15. Hegel, Robert E. "The Tower of Myriad Mirrors: Mind as Morass." In The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. 142-66.
16. Hsia, C. T. "Journey to the West." In The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction. 1968. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. 107-52.
17. Lu Hsun. A Brief History of Chinese Fiction. 1923-24. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. 1959. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1982.
18. Plaks, Andrew H. "Hsi-yu chi: Inversion of Emptiness." In The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel: Ssu ta ch'i-shu. 1987. Princeton Legacy Library. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. 183-278.
19. Waley, Arthur. The Real Tripitaka and Other Pieces. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1952.
20. Yu, Anthony C. "Liu I Ming on How to Read the Hsi-yu chi (the Journey to the West)." In How to Read the Chinese Novel. Ed. David L. Rolston. With contributions from Shuen-fu Lin, David T. Roy, Andrew H. Plaks, John C. Y Wang, David L. Rolston, Anthony C. Yu. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. 295-315.

Wu Cheng'en (c.1501-1582)

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• category - Chinese Literature: Chinese Fiction

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