Introduction

Journey to the West and Further Adventures on the Journey to the West

A dualism characterizes Further Adventures on the Journey to the West. On the one hand, it is an outgrowth of Journey to the West (Xiyou ji, 1592), and is hence derivative of, and dependent on, the parent novel, and is often called a sequel.³ It belongs to the sequence of Chinese texts produced over the centuries that share beloved central characters: anecdotes, plays, pieces of fiction, and—more recently—cartoons, films, television series, and even computer games that narrate adventures of a fabulous simian, the Monkey King, and the Buddhist monk for whom he serves as bodyguard and guide during their quest to obtain the Buddhist scriptures.⁴ On the other hand, it is also a multilayered literary work on its own. This dualistic nature results in a serious novel that engages the parent novel—challenging it, expanding it, and reorienting it.

To understand Further Adventures and its accomplishments, let us first introduce the fullest version of these tales. Journey to the West is a Ming dynasty (1368–1644) novel in one hundred chapters, the earliest extant wood-block edition of which was published by Shidetang printing house in Suzhou. It is loosely based on a pilgrimage to India for the Buddhist sutras by the Chinese monk Xuanzang (596?–664). Historically, the journey, including his extended stay in India, began in 627 and concluded with his return to the Tang capital in 645. Xuanzang left behind a travelogue, A Record of the Western Regions of the Great Tang (Da Tang Xiyu ji),⁵ a description of the states he visited, which he dictated to Bianji (619–649), one of his disciples. Another disciple, Huili (b. 615), compiled A Biography of the Master of Dharma, Sanzang, of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang (Da Tang Da Ci’ensi Sanzang fashi zhuan), which was subsequently enlarged by Yancong (dates unknown).⁶ These historical, biographical, and hagiographical works inaugurated popular interest in his saga, which developed into a variety of dramatic and fictional forms. It took centuries for the Ming dynasty one-hundred-chapter version, the 1592 Shidetang edition, to take its current shape. Although this version was most influential, later one-hundred-chapter editions abridged certain elements of the text. Some of those later editions were also revised by various editors based on religious and artistic considerations.

Journey to the West amalgamates motifs, legends, and sagas of China and India, as well as those belonging to several religious and signifying systems—Buddhist, Daoist, and popular beliefs. It also incorporates only loosely related story cycles; an example of the latter is the story of Emperor Taizong’s descent into the Underworld. In certain episodes, the most capable of the travelers, the Monkey King, enlists assistance from supernatural figures of both the Buddhist and Daoist pantheons, as well as from figures in folk religions or beliefs.

The band of pilgrims reaches its full complement in Journey to the West. In addition to the Monkey King, Sun Wukong (his religious name), and his master, the Tang Monk Tripitaka (Sanzang; so named for his broad knowledge of the tripartite/san Buddhist Canon/zang), the company also includes the Pig, Zhu Eight Vows (Bajie), or Zhu Wuneng (his religious name); the Sand (Sha) Monk, or Sha Wujing (again, his religious name); and a dragon-turned-horse. Monkey, or Sun Wukong, represents the mind and the spiritual, whereas the Pig symbolizes the flesh and desire for food and sex. The fictional journey takes fourteen years, or 5,048 days, coinciding with the number of scrolls in one division of the Tripitaka, a perfect canonical number. The journey ends with the return to the West and the apotheosis of the pilgrimage party after they have delivered the scriptures to the Tang emperor. Over the centuries, the novel has become increasingly popular in China, creating a vital and vibrant web of commentarial traditions and inspiring the creation of many other works.

The novel’s popularity and vitality are reflected and manifested in its sequels and extensions, in which the journey is continued, retaken, or extended and amplified.⁷ By far the best-written work in this category is Further Adventures on the Journey to the West. As a note following the title of the novel, on the first page of the first chapter in the earliest edition, instructs, this short novel is to be read as if its adventures occurred between chapters 61 and 62 of Journey to the West. There, in chapters 59 to 61, the way to the West is blocked by a range of flaming mountains, extending so far that the pilgrims cannot get around them. At the beginning of this episode, the travelers are assailed by increasing heat, even though the season is autumn, when the temperature should be getting cooler. They come upon “several buildings by the road, all having red tiles on the roof, red bricks on the wall, red painted doors, and red lacquered-wood benches. Everything, in fact, was red” (JW, 3:119; XYJ, 59.713). Gradually, the members of the party learn that the cause of the heat is the Mountain of Flames, and the only way to extinguish the fire is by borrowing a palm-leaf fan in the possession of Lady Rākṣasī, the wife of a former sworn brother of Sun Wukong from his pre-pilgrimage days, and mother of Red Boy, a monster whom Sun Wukong recently helped subdue and enroll as a disciple of Bodhisattva Guanyin.

Sun Wukong is confident that Lady Rākṣasī will willingly lend him her fan because of his past ties with her husband. This turns out to be an erroneous assumption, and in the three attempts it takes to finally get hold of the fan and extinguish the flames, he has to resort to such expediencies as changing himself into an insect and making his way into her stomach to cause her pain, and impersonating her husband and flirting with her.

The Mountain of Flames has many levels of signification. Oddly enough, its fire, the reader learns, is caused by Sun Wukong himself. In chapter 7 of the original novel, the mischievous Sun Wukong is locked up as punishment in the alchemical brazier of Laozi, the Daoist patriarch, but instead of being killed, Sun Wukong only becomes more refined and his magical powers enhanced. He escapes from the furnace and on the way out knocks several blazing bricks from the brazier, which fall down to earth, where they become the Mountain of Flames. So it is Sun Wukong, himself a former monster, who is responsible for the problem in the first place. In Buddhism, most famously in the Lotus Sutra (Chinese: Miaofa lianhua jing, or Fahua jing; Sanskrit: Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra), the ordinary world is likened to a burning house (huozhai; T, 262.9.12–13), with fire representing insatiable human desire; the fire in Journey to the West can be interpreted in this way.

Desire and Saṃsāra

To the author of Further Adventures, Sun Wukong in the parent novel had extinguished the fire with a fan that he obtained using coercion and guile. If the fire represents burning human desire, in particular sexual desire, it seems that Sun Wukong had sought an easy—but problematic—solution. He simply extinguishes the fire, without recognizing it for what it is. Indeed, in the parent novel Sun Wukong and the Tang Monk can be said to have always taken an escapist attitude toward desire, particularly desire of a sexual nature. Generally, they flee from desire without dealing with it directly. In particular, Sun Wukong and his master are seldom vulnerable to this form of temptation, although they have an abundance of other weaknesses.⁸ In chapter 95, where the Jade Hare transforms into a princess to entice the Tang Monk, “when Pilgrim saw that his master was completely unmoved, he said to himself in silent praise, ‘Marvelous monk! Marvelous monk!’ ” (JW, 4:295; XYJ, 95.1133).⁹

In Further Adventures, which symbolically retraces the journey through the Mountain of Flames, Sun Wukong becomes the chief protagonist, although Tripitaka also figures prominently. Significantly, Sun Wukong is consistently referred to as Pilgrim (Xingzhe) in the narration, for a reason: the author sees him as a traveler through a new landscape, a learner going through a new experience and on an unfamiliar quest, an apprentice who represents all of us. Consequently, in the rest of this introduction he is referred to as Pilgrim. In this narrative both Pilgrim and Tripitaka have to deal directly with emotional attachments, unavoidably responding to them.

As is now clear, the new journey is through the “flames” of human desire. The author answers a hypothetical question: “Journey to the West is not incomplete; why should you write a supplement to it?” “What is added to the Journey to the West is the Demon of Desire [qing]. The Qing Fish [Mackerel] Spirit is none other than this demon.” In this novel, all the characters and settings are apparitions and mirages created by the monster. “Qing Fish” (Qingyu 鯖魚) is a homophone of “desire” (qingyu 情慾), especially erotic desire. Many elements have this quality. For instance, the season of spring, when everything turns green, evokes sexual desire; moreover, the word “green” or “dark blue” (qing 青) is a homophone of “desire” (qing 情). The name of the ruler of the present world, King of the Lesser Moon (Xiaoyuewang 小月王), is a rebus of qing 情 (desire). Other objects, like jade (yu 玉), suggest desire (yu 慾). Indeed, desire (qing 情) permeates this book.

Moreover, desire is intertwined with saṃsāra, or is saṃsāra, the world of death and rebirth. In the parent novel, Pilgrim always regards himself as having transcended saṃsāra and having become an immortal. In chapter 5, he finds himself in the company of beautiful women, with himself changed into the form of Fair Lady Yu, one of the most beautiful women in history, who is renowned for her devotion to the famous general Xiang Yu (232–202 BCE). Pilgrim thinks, “Strange! Since I, Old Monkey, came to life in that stone box,¹⁰ I have never experienced saṃsāra by going through birth and death as a man or a woman, never found myself among such elegant women.” At this point the commentator in the Kongqingshi edition declares, “What confronts him here is nothing other than saṃsāra, life and death as a man or a woman; how can he say he has never experienced it?” The same sentiment is also found in the preface: he “thought that he was, from the beginningless beginning, not subject to reincarnation and was aloof from saṃsāra,” but he “is himself experiencing none other than reincarnation and saṃsāra.” The plot and other details have erotic suggestions. Some of the words and expressions, in the idioms of that time, point to the sexual: for instance, the Jade Gate (suggesting the Gate of Desire) with a two-leaf door, and the bottomless well (the vagina and birth canal) that leads to the World of the Future. Pilgrim falls through this bottomless well to the World of the Future, suggesting that he is experiencing life, death, and rebirth, at least vicariously. Indeed, another persistent presence is death, which is inextricably intertwined with the erotic. The World of the Ancients is of course the World of the Dead, and the fact that he finds himself in it suggests his experience of death, or at least former life. Significantly, in that world he becomes Fair Lady Yu 虞, whose name also suggests desire (yu 慾). Pilgrim is, in effect, experiencing desire as a woman. In chapter 7, Pilgrim has doubts about his masquerade as Lady Yu: “My tonsured head would fall far short of what they expect from Lady Yu’s style.” “When Pilgrim saw the mirror,” however, “he took a hasty and furtive look, to see how he would compare with the real Lady Yu. His image in the mirror turned out to be more graceful and attractive.” In the World of the Future, Pilgrim serves as King Yama in the Underworld, which may also suggest an experience of death, albeit a death in the future. The World of the Green, the contemporary world, is one of youthful exuberance and folly; here “green” (qing), apart from suggesting “desire” by way of pronunciation, also means “youthful folly.” In short, here Pilgrim becomes the mortal being he never was in the parent novel.

The Structure

There is a reason for Pilgrim to be singled out as the chief protagonist in Further Adventures. As is explained by the author in the “Questions and Answers” section, “In the original Journey to the West, there are hundreds, even tens of thousands, of demons, and every one of them wants to skin the Tang Monk and chop up his flesh. You, sir, have created this supplement to Journey to the West, and yet the Qing Fish bewitches only the Great Sage. Why is that?” His answer to the question is, “Mencius said, ‘The sole concern of learning is to go after this strayed heart. That is all.’ ”¹¹ The quotation from Mencius (Mengzi, 6A:11) clearly implies that what is at stake is the heart or mind that strays; the purpose of learning is to retrieve it. Since Pilgrim represents the mind and heart, he is bewitched and becomes the protagonist of Further Adventures. This is an inward and psychological journey in Pilgrim’s mind with challenges of a different nature.

The journey in the parent novel is mainly set in the wilderness and in various supernatural realms, but most events take place on the earthly road. What mesmerizes the reader are the fights between resourceful and versatile monsters and the invincible Monkey, ultimately canonized as Buddha Victorious in Strife. Further Adventures, as a dream, is set, on the one hand, in an alternative world—“beyond Heaven”; on the other, it takes place mainly in a series of seemingly terrestrial palaces, terraces, and pavilions, although with the penultimate chapter the story returns to the chaotic wilderness.

As Further Adventures is about Pilgrim’s desire, the characters he meets are different from those in the parent novel; they are all manifestations of his one nemesis, Desire. In the words of the author himself in the question-and-answer prefatory section, “In the original text of Journey to the West, all the demons have heads of oxen and tigers, or they roar like ravenous beasts, or they have the appearance of wolves. In the fifteen chapters of Further Adventures on the Journey to the West the forms assumed by the Qing Fish are young and graceful, just like a person.¹² Why?” The answer: “These words precisely encapsulate the actions and appearance of the foremost demon since the beginning of history.” In chapter 14 Pilgrim is surprised by the beauty of an enchantress, the Kingfisher-Green Cord Lady: “In the human world, when people talk about how beautiful a woman is, they generally compare her to the Bodhisattva Guanyin. I, Old Monkey, have not seen the Bodhisattva Guanyin any too often, but still I’ve seen her ten or twenty times. But judging from appearance, the Bodhisattva would have to come in second to this woman!” In chapter 12, even Pilgrim, whose visual acuity has always allowed him to distinguish monsters from humans, has his doubts: “He took a look at the King of the Lesser Moon: he did not look like a monster,” although Pilgrim is convinced that the king must be one.

Further Adventures falls into three parts: chapters 1–3, 4–10, and 11–16. The first part inaugurates the dream world. Chapter 1 opens like many chapters in the original Journey to the West. After a chapter-opening poem and then a brief statement that mentions the Qing Fish and hints at the entire story of the novel, brief reference is made to the previous adventure at the Mountain of Flames. Pilgrim and the Tang Monk argue about whether the peonies they see are red, and then the narrative describes how a company of young women and children make their appearance, obstructing the way and teasing the Tang Monk. They play the same role as the Mountain of Flames in the parent novel: the travelers have to pass through them in order to reach the West. Pilgrim ends up simply killing them all. This has been his approach to such problems in the parent novel: he relies on his weapon to destroy the monstrous tempters or temptresses whose true form only he can see. However, Pilgrim here experiences uncharacteristic pity for his victims and composes a dirge for them, a parody of this genre. After staging a mock memorial ceremony and reciting the elegy, he finds that the Tang Monk has quite unexpectedly fallen asleep, along with the other disciples. Pilgrim plays some pranks on the pig Eight Vows (including pretending to be the Tang Monk and claiming that Guanyin came and said that Eight Vows should just give up religion and get married), then leaps into midair to look for food for his master.

In the next chapter, Pilgrim, aloft, finds himself in a different world, one that he does not recognize and in which he is powerless: his favorite technique in the parent novel is to summon local deities and question them about the challenges he is about to face, but inexplicably none respond here. He finds himself quite alone in the capital city of the New Tang, the alternative Tang. In this chapter, Pilgrim hears about the Mountain-Ridding Bell and begins his search for it as a means to smooth their path westward.

In chapter 3, he discovers that his master, the Tang Monk, has been appointed a general by the emperor of the New Tang. In fright, he plans to follow the envoy sent by the emperor with his master’s investiture, but he soon loses sight of the envoy. The search for the Mountain-Ridding Bell and for his master constitute two lines along which the plot of the remainder of the book unfolds. The end of chapter 3 leads Pilgrim to the counterpart of the New Tang, the World of the Green (“green” punning with “desire”), which, as mentioned earlier, is characterized by youthful exuberance and folly.

The second part (chapters 4–10) covers Pilgrim’s adventures while he is detained in the Gallery of a Million Mirrors, built by the King of the Lesser Moon (chapter 4). There, the mirrors do not reflect; instead, they are entry points into different worlds, all manifestations of Pilgrim’s mind. There are a million of these mirrors, corresponding to his innumerable, ever-changing states of mind. In one mirror, he sees how scholars, trained for the civil service examination, as well as their family members and friends, react to the announcement of the result, for which they have invested so much (chapter 4). With Pilgrim’s own comment on the system, this part serves as a scathing social satire. In another, he finds himself, changed into the form of Fair Lady Yu, in the company of well-known beautiful women in the World of the Ancients: Green Pearl and Xishi, historical figures who have undergone fictional embellishments and transformations, and the fictional Sisi (chapter 5). Then, in the form of Fair Lady Yu, Pilgrim spends a night with Xiang Yu, Lady Yu’s husband (chapters 6–7). After this he exits the World of the Ancients for the World of the Future. He falls from the Jade Gate through the bottomless well into the World of the Future. This suggests his experience of rebirth through the birth canal—his experience of saṃsāra, as discussed previously.

As soon as he finds himself in the future (chapters 8–9), he learns that the King of the Underworld himself has died, and Pilgrim has been chosen as his substitute. In this capacity, he serves as the justice presiding over the trial of Qin Hui (1090–1155), the historical grand councilor of the Song who betrayed the dynasty to invaders from the north: here Pilgrim travels into the future to bring justice to a historical wrong. Finally, he returns to the present (chapter 10), the World of the Green, after a series of entanglements and much bewilderment in the World of the Future.

Since the novel’s main theme is for Pilgrim to undergo the life-death cycle, albeit in dream, he travels through the past and the future, experiencing death vicariously, although desire also plays a vital role in these experiences. If in the second part Pilgrim is confronted with the mirror worlds, with himself an active participant in the challenges they present, then in the third part Pilgrim becomes mainly an observer who scrutinizes his master from a distance and is in hiding most of the time. It seems that in the second part the narration is from an omniscient point of view focused on Pilgrim, including his consciousness. In the third part, the point of view is Pilgrim’s own: the reader sees through Pilgrim’s eyes—in short, we follow the process of his own thoughts and reasoning. He is in the dark about much of what he sees, so the narration plays a complementary role, helping us to understand his situation. However, Pilgrim is drawn toward the center of action in the last two chapters, so that the symbolic journey can be concluded.

Pilgrim has been attempting to reunite with his master since chapter 2, but until chapter 11 he has instead gotten entangled in other adventures. Now, quite incredibly for Pilgrim, he discovers that the monk has succumbed to the carnal temptations put before him and has renounced his journey to the West, having first become involved with the King of the Lesser Moon, then wedded to a woman whose very name—Kingfisher-Green Cord Lady—suggests emotional entanglements. Pilgrim’s observation of what has happened to his master at the same time forces him to examine his own life, culminating in a meeting with a “wise old man” who is able to tell his fortune. He eavesdrops on others talking about a play that has him as the protagonist: in the play he has become a grand councilor and has fathered children (again, his experience of saṃsāra). Meanwhile, his master, appointed the Supreme Green-Eradication General, now accepts his commission and leads forth an army, which dramatizes the tension between desire and the attempt to annihilate it. Pilgrim joins in the battle, where he encounters someone who claims to be his son from his liaison with Lady Rākṣasī (Pilgrim’s involvement in saṃsāra in the current world). At the climax of the battle, when all the forces are thrown into confusion, he is awakened from his dream by a Buddha figure. Pilgrim then recognizes and kills the Qing Fish, who had bewitched him, and rejoins his master and companions, ready for the next adventure.

The configuration of the monster, the Qing Fish, in relation to Pilgrim is particularly significant; the whole book involves Pilgrim’s attempts to understand it. In the last chapter, he realizes that he is bewitched by the Qing Fish and destroys it. The Lord of the Void tells him that the Qing Fish is none other than his own desire (qing). Thus, all the adventures boil down to projections of his own mind, and all his attempts to understand the worlds he falls into have only led him farther inward.

As an archetype, Pilgrim’s new adventures may be seen as a descent in which “the hero travels perilously through a dark labyrinthine underworld full of monsters between sunset and sunrise. This theme may become a structural principle of fiction on any level of sophistication,” to use the words of Northrop Frye.¹³ “The lower world … reached by a descent,” the critic writes elsewhere, “is more oracular and sinister, and is or includes a place of torment and punishment.”¹⁴ This is true of Further Adventures, except that the descent is into the world of dream.

Furthermore, Pilgrim’s descent is into the Qing Fish, as, indeed, the author states in the Questions and Answers: “When the Great Sage was in the belly of the Qing Fish, he was unaware that there was a Qing Fish. Once he leapt outside of the Qing Fish, only then did he realize there was a Qing Fish. Moreover, when he leaps out of the Qing Fish, he does not know that the one who instantly kills the Qing Fish is still the same Great Sage.” Thus, he and the Qing Fish are one and the same; he has been bewitched by himself, or to be more precise, by his own desire.

The Late Ming: The Historical Context

The obsession with desire in Further Adventures might be better understood if it is contextualized within the late Ming period, when the so-called cult of qing (love or desire) was at its height. At the beginning of chapter 1, the travelers encounter peony trees in the midst of a verdant wilderness. Moreover, the author particularly stresses the redness of their flowers. The redness brings to mind, on the one hand, the redness of the flames in the Palm-Leaf Fan episode; the flower, on the other, is the centerpiece of the cult of qing, the famous play Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting) by Tang Xianzu.¹⁵ Indeed, the emphasis on desire is a result of the spirit of the author’s time.

One may also find references to the political life of the late Ming, however obliquely. In chapter 2, Pilgrim wonders how there could be thirty-eight emperors in less than twenty years and concedes that if there were a new emperor every month, all could be installed in four years. Historically, at the death of Shenzong, the Wanli emperor in 1620, Guangzong, the Taichang emperor, acceded to the throne, but the new emperor died a month later. Pilgrim’s reasoning may have something to do with this event.

Further Adventures brings up historical figures who lived after the Tang dynasty. For instance, we mentioned above how Pilgrim is brought to the underworld to judge the case of Qin Hui, the Song traitor who was responsible for the death of General Yue Fei (1103–1142), who also appears in the novel. It is very likely that the author of the novel wanted to reader to link Qin Hui with Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627), the eunuch power broker of the Tianqi reign-period (1621–1627), whose very destructive political career coincided with the time that Further Adventures was written.¹⁶ The episodes of Pilgrim judging Qin Hui in the Underworld attest to the hostility between Wei and the literati class, and the punishments meted out to Qin Hui had parallels with the posthumous dismemberment and public exposure of Wei Zhongxian’s corpse.

If Wei Zhongxian is too negative a case, then Pilgrim’s admiration of Yue Fei constitutes a positive one. Pilgrim began his career a Daoist; his first teacher was a Daoist patriarch. He was then converted to Buddhism, taking Tripitaka as his second master. In the World of the Future, he takes Yue Fei, a Confucian patriot, as his third master, attesting to the syncretic tendencies among Ming intellectuals, the oneness of the three teachings. As Pilgrim says, “This combines all three teachings in one body.” In this way, the novel has enhanced the tendency that can also be found in the parent book.

There are many other details that point to the late Ming, some of which attract the author’s satirical barbs, although some are good-natured. Examples include the lifestyle of literati, particularly a group of literary celebrities, with their literary involvements, their obsession with the civil service examinations, their abandonment in passion and wine, even their mannerisms and their drinking games.

Intertextuality: Allusions, Quotations, Parodies

Traditional critics have praised the author’s versatility in literary composition. Many forms of writing are included in the novel: different forms and genres of verse and prose, and many varieties of occasional writings, including the elegy, the civil service examination essay, chantefables, and imperial edicts. Moreover, numerous poems and prose passages worked into the text are quoted from well-known authors (identified in the notes to the translation), giving the writing in the novel, on occasion, the appearance of a literary collage.

In chapter 5, four characters—Green Pearl, Xishi, Sisi, and Pilgrim, now in the form of Fair Lady Yu—engage in a drinking game, one phase of which requires the participants to recite a line from the poetry of the ancients. The lines recited by Xishi, Sisi, and Lady Yu are from a poem by Song Lian (1310–1381), “Song on a Cool Night” (Yeliang qu),¹⁷ and two poems from Tang Xianzu’s poetry collection, Poems from the Camellia Hall (Yumingtang shi). From the outspoken longing and desire of the first line, the quotations progress first to Tang Xianzu’s description of a heavenly scene evoked by music (one only hears the sound of the female protagonist’s jewelry, instead of having a vision of her),¹⁸ and then to a line the Ming poet wrote to a famous literatus, who was then suffering from the consequences of his romantic involvements.¹⁹ The last line encapsulates the tension between desire, embodied in “clouds and rain” or physical love, and religion, symbolized by “repentance”—precisely the central theme of Further Adventures.

Incorporating quotations from the ancients was a normal literati practice. Allusions and quotations are scattered throughout the novel, which further attests to the elite nature of the book: it is meant for a highly educated audience who would immediately recognize what is being quoted and what is being alluded to. A well-educated reader will be able to smile heartily over the author’s ingenious manipulation of previous works of literature (in this translation, one goal of our annotation is to help the reader understand what such smiles were about). In the parent novel, the author assumes the persona of a storyteller in the narrative, although there are hints of complicated religious concepts in chapter titles and elsewhere. In this novel, the author constantly reminds us of his learning, erudition, and versatility, manifested in the ingenious quotations and transmutations of the quoted texts. It is common for the parent novel to include lengthy passages of verse, but they are mostly in vernacular Chinese; in this novel, the poems, if not quoted, are generally more allusive, suggesting literati writing; the ballads sung by the blind singers is a case in point (chapter 12). In this way, as a literatus he appropriates elements from the popular Journey to the West for appreciation by the literati.

Authorship and Editions

There are two theories concerning the identity of the author of Further Adventures. One is that the sole author was Dong Tuo (1620–1686), whose personal name has also been romanized as Yue.²⁰ The other attributes the work to Dong Tuo’s father, Dong Sizhang (1587–1628), with perhaps some additions and extra editorial work by the son.²¹ But the preface to the novel is dated 1641, which would have meant that Dong Tuo wrote the novel in his late teens or early twenties; given the novel’s complexity, this hardly seems likely. For a long time, the theory of Dong Tuo’s authorship held sway, until Gao Hongjun proposed a dissenting opinion in 1985.²² After that, Fu Chengzhou, Wang Hongjun, among other Chinese scholars, as well as Robert E. Hegel and David L. Rolston in the West, have written about the likelihood that it was Dong Sizhang who wrote at least the bulk of the novel.²³

The main piece of evidence put forward as support for Dong Tuo’s authorship is a note affixed to a line of poetry the younger Dong wrote in 1650: “Ten years ago I supplemented Journey to the West, which has a section on the Gallery of a Million Mirrors.”²⁴ One question is what, exactly, he “supplemented.” Was it Journey to the West, the hundred-chapter novel, or was it the supplement, Further Adventures? I would interpret the line as referring to his supplementing the supplement.

Moreover, late Ming authors of vernacular fiction conventionally signed their work with pen names. Both the first page of chapter 1 of the original Chongzhen era edition and the prefatory piece, “Answers to Questions Concerning Further Adventures,” identify the author of the novel as the Master of Silent Whistle Studio (Jingxiaozhai Zhuren).²⁵ Jingxiaozhai was a pen name frequently used by Dong Sizhang. Had his son written the novel, we would expect him to have used a pen name of his own (he had many). If he really wanted to use a pen name that referred to his father’s studio name, he would have had to resort to something like Junior Master of Silent Whistle Studio (Xiao Jingxiaozhai Zhuren). However, the real core of my argument for Dong Sizhang’s authorship of the novel involves a detailed textual comparison with Dong Sizhang’s other writings, which I will not rehearse here.²⁶

For generations the Dongs had been a powerful family, renowned for their culture and service to the Ming imperial house; several members held important and prestigious positions after obtaining the highest degree in the civil service examinations. The family fortunes, however, suffered a significant decline in Dong Sizhang’s generation. Dong Sizhang was not successful in the higher examinations, and he was impractical in managing the finances of his family—impractical to such an extent that his tenants appropriated his property. He was a proud man, and his life was spent in artistic and religious pursuits. He even taught his son, Dong Tuo, to recite the Buddhist sutras before introducing the Confucian classics to him. Dong Sizhang associated with renowned monks, among them Yunqi (1535–1615), Hanshan (1546–1623), Xueqiao (1571–1647), and Zhanran (1561–1626). In Hanshan’s collected works there is a letter written to Dong Sizhang; the master gave him a religious name, Fujue (Blessed by Enlightenment), and a courtesy name, Zhiguang (Light of Wisdom). Master Hanshan wrote:

In basic nature, all sentient beings are equal to Buddha: originally, there were no such forms as defilement, life or death, existence or nonexistence. All these are a result of ignorance, with the original nature beclouded, so this state is called delusion. Delusion leads to illusory thoughts and all kinds of topsy-turvy views, which causes one to create all kinds of karma and, in ignorance, suffer through transmigration and life-death cycles in the three realms. This is all because of one’s ignorance, one’s failure to achieve enlightenment about one’s original mind, and one’s being turned about by delusional thoughts. It is like one fast asleep having nightmares, with all kinds of situations, horrors, and unbearable suffering. When he wakes up and looks for the things of his dream, he finds nothing. In this way, all sentient beings fall into this dream of ignorance, with delusional thoughts giving rise to distorted views: they make all kinds of karma and endure all kinds of suffering caused by themselves. When they wake up and look around, where can they find the deluded and distorted conditions? Now, in the dream of ignorance, how can one destroy the old karma? He should destroy ignorance with the “light of wisdom,” firmly believing in the purity of his original mind and not allowing delusional and distorted thoughts to turn him around—if so, there would be no causes for any karma, since delusional and distorted thoughts are the causes of all karma.²⁷

Master Hanshan’s comments here inform both the subject and structure of Further Adventures while referring, obliquely, to its author. The “light of wisdom” (zhihuiguang) points to Zhiguang, the courtesy name chosen for Dong Sizhang by Master Hanshan.

Dong Sizhang suffered from bouts of chronic illness for a long time. In 1614, when he was twenty-nine years of age by Chinese reckoning, his illness worsened and he was prepared to die. He wrote fifteen poems thinking these would be his last, as well as one in the tone of Xiang Yu, the Hegemon-King of Chu who was to figure prominently in the novel; the manner with which King Xiang commanded the princes and nobles of the land is recapitulated in the novel. It is likely that he wrote the novel after 1614.

Dong Sizhang’s literary output includes An Expanded Account of Wide-Ranging Things (Guang Bowu zhi), an enlarged edition of Zhang Hua’s (232–300) An Account of Wide-Ranging Things (Bowu zhi), a miscellany of mythological and fictional nature, an encyclopedic compilation. He also edited a compendium of literary works by writers from his hometown, and he was an accomplished poet. Moreover, he was proficient in almost all the literary genres, including qu, or operatic arias.

Dong Sizhang had a sense of humor as well, one instance being how he named his son, Tuo. The character zhang in the father’s personal name means tension or even intensity, like a bowstring drawn taut; Tuo, by contrast, is its antonym. However, the elder Dong manifested more relaxation, while the younger Dong had a more high-strung personality. In the education of his son, the elder Dong adopted a kind of laissez-faire attitude. Dong Tuo particularly remembered how his father asked the tutor not to make him rise too early for class and how the elder Dong was worried that he was exerting himself too much in studying.²⁸ Because Dong Sizhang was emaciated, perhaps aggravated by prolonged illness, he called himself “the Thin Layman.” He wrote an autobiographical sketch titled “An Autobiography of the Thin Layman” (Shou Jushi zhuan).

Dong Sizhang probably wrote Further Adventures during the prolonged illness mentioned above, initially including only fifteen chapters, the number listed in the table of contents of the original edition. Although the text and chapter title couplet for chapter 11 do appear in their proper place in the body of the 1641 novel, in the table of contents the chapter numbers from that point on are all off by one compared with the body of the text. In the “Questions and Answers” prefatory piece signed by Jingxiaozhai Zhuren, the book is said to have fifteen chapters. Several late Ming novels had sixteen chapters. It is possible that Dong Sizhang began to add another chapter himself but failed to complete it before his death, and that when his son Dong Tuo published his father’s works as a filial obligation, he had the chapter completed. In fact many of the elder Dong’s works were published by his friends after his death, and one of them even wrote about doing so in an elegiac piece on the passing of Dong Sizhang.²⁹

The only extant copy of the first edition of Further Adventures is held in the National Library of China. It was published with a complete set of critical apparatus, a characteristic it shares with other novels of the time. First is the preface signed with the pen name Layman Niru (Niru Jushi); it is dated the Mid-Autumn Day (the fifteenth day of the eighth month) in the year xinsi (1641), the fourteenth year of the Chongzhen reign-period; this is the main evidence for the date of the Chongzhen edition. This preface is extremely well written and provides a thought-provoking introduction to the novel. After this come sixteen illustrations.³⁰ They are followed by the “Questions and Answers” piece mentioned above, the table of contents, and then the text of the novel proper. Unfortunately, the original title page (fengmian) is missing; it might have contained further useful information.

The text is accompanied by commentaries, which are not signed. David Rolston thinks that such writings are by the author himself and calls them “auto-commentary.”³¹ They are of two types: comments about the text, which are printed in the top margin of the page (moved to the text proper in this translation), and general comments printed at the end of each chapter. The practice is consistent, and the comments are very concise and to the point. They help the reader in the interpretation of the text; they also point to how the author wrote the novel, and how it should be read and appreciated.

The book was perhaps not meant to be popular reading: it was written and published for a well-educated audience. The “Questions and Answers” section and the commentary may attest to this. That only one copy has survived from the original edition might mean that the original printing was very small and for a select audience.³²

Over two hundred years later, a copy of Further Adventures caught the attention of a group of scholars accomplished in textual editing: Qian Peiming (dates unknown; nineteenth century), known as Scholar in Pursuit of the Dao of Three-in-One (Sanyi Daoren); Zhang Wenhu (1808–1885), known as Woodsman of Mount Tianmu (Tianmu Shanqiao);³³ and Gu Guanguang (1799–1862), known as Mountain Man of Wuling (Wuling Shanren). Qian Peiming was the son of Qian Xijing (dates unknown), who was a son of an uncle of Qian Xizuo (d. 1844), a well-known bibliophile whose editions are widely acclaimed. Gu Guanguang’s home was close to Qian Peiming’s, and Zhang Wenhu lived at the Qian compound, most likely employed as a private tutor to Qian’s children. This group of scholars shared a passion for editing and publishing rare books. While working on a series of books, they also produced a new edition of Further Adventures. It was issued by Kongqingshi (the Kongqing Studio), most likely a name created for the sole purpose of publishing this novel, after an important concept in the novel (Kongqing means to “empty the green,” i.e., desire).

This second edition carried a preface signed by Tianmu Shanqiao (Zhang Wenhu), dated 1853. In it, Zhang wrote:

On a tour of Ying[dou] Lake,³⁴ I was given an old hand-copied manuscript of Further Adventures by someone surnamed Wu. The text is accompanied by short comments. I showed this to my friend, Wuling Shanren [Gu Guanguang], who said, “They don’t go far enough.” He added some comments and showed the manuscript to Sanyi Daoren [Qian Peiming], who said, “Amazing, but still incomplete.” He made a more thorough study of it and wrote further comments, making deletions and keeping what was pertinent.³⁵

Zhang Wenhu’s tour of Yingdou Lake occurred in 1843, while he accompanied Qian Xizuo on his journey to Beijing (Qian Xizuo was awaiting an official appointment, but unfortunately died the following year); it could have been on this tour that he received the manuscript.³⁶ It was perhaps a manuscript copy of the Chongzhen edition, without the illustrations and the preface signed by Layman Niru; judging from their practice in other publications, this group of scholars would have included this preface had it been available to them.³⁷

Following Zhang’s preface is the table of contents and the text proper. Here Qian Peiming’s contribution comes to the fore. It is mainly through his efforts that the novel was brought to the attention of the public. As a veteran critic and editor, he edited this novel, writing copious comments as well as a lengthy afterword, “Miscellaneous Notes on Reading Further Adventures on the Journey to the West” (Du Xiyou bu zaji), as he had for other books included in the series he edited.³⁸

The commentary in this edition was mainly by Qian Peiming; Gu Guanguang also contributed some comments, which were printed under his pen name. They also incorporated a selection of comments from the earliest edition. This set of comments continued to highlight the author’s achievement in literary composition. However, after some two centuries, they sometimes had difficulties in understanding the author’s playfulness.

The Kongqingshi edition was a handsome example of wood-block printing, but it did not attract much attention. Twenty-two years later, in 1875, the first year in the Guangxu reign-period, Qian Peiming, under the pen name Sanyi Daoren, had the novel published again at the Shanghai Shun Pao Publishing House (Shenbaoguan; the Shun Pao [1872–1949] was the earliest newspaper in Chinese) in a typeset edition. It is based on the Kongqingshi edition, with certain alterations and an addition of “Further Adventures on the Journey to the West: A General Exegesis” (Xiyou bu zongshi), both attesting to Qian Peiming’s meticulous care with the novel. This exegesis is Daoist in orientation, in the manner of True Interpretation of the Journey to the West (Xiyou zhenquan) by Chen Shibin (fl. 1690s), the Master Who Has Comprehended the One (Wuyizi),³⁹ which attempts a comprehensive explication of the parent novel.

This edition became the basis of various modern editions in the first half of the twentieth century. Only then did this novel attract the attention of modern scholars, thanks to the efforts of the three late Qing scholars and, earlier, the filial Dong Tuo.

Further Adventures on the Journey to the West is rare among novels in Chinese vernacular fiction; many scholars, including Lu Xun (1881–1936), have assessed it in highly appreciative terms. Lu Xun thought that the author was ahead of other writers of his time in terms of skill in literary composition. Both Chinese and Western critics have recognized the author’s resourcefulness and versatility as a writer, as well as his philosophical profundity and his understanding of the workings of dreams. For instance, the tension between desire and the Dao was often emphasized in Ming and Qing period writings. However, few writers could have expressed it as concisely and succinctly as is done in this extract from the first answer in “Answers to Questions”:

The forty-eight thousand years [of human history] are nothing but the entanglement of the intertwining roots of qing [desire]. To be enlightened about the great Dao, one has to empty and destroy the roots of qing. To empty and destroy the root of qing, one first has to enter qing. When one enters qing one is able to see the emptiness of its roots. Then when one makes an exit from qing one is able to see the reality of the roots of Dao.