Note on this Translation

The basic text for this translation is the variorum edition produced by Li Qiancheng: Xiyou bu jiaozhu (Beijing: Kunlun, 2011). This was prepared on the basis of the Chongzhen xinsi (1641 edition) photo-reprinted first in 1955 (Beijing: Wenxue Guji), with additions and corrections adapted from the Kongqingshi edition of Xianfeng 3 (1853) along with its preface by the Woodsman of Mount Tianmu. The 1875 Shenbaoguan edition has been regularly consulted throughout. The variorum edition includes commentary and other prefatory materials from all three editions. All the paratextual materials from the earliest edition are translated here. Comments from two editions are included within the text of the translation, set off by brackets, set in italic type, and introduced by “C” and “K” respectively. This is for the sake of convenience only; the comments in the Chongzhen edition are mostly printed in the upper margins of the page, whereas those in the Kongqingshi edition are interlineal. The sixteen illustrations are reproduced with permission from the only known copy of the Chongzhen edition, held in the National Library of China, Beijing. This translation aims to reproduce as nearly as possible what readers encountered when they first read its Ming and Qing period imprints.

Ours is not the first English version of this short novel. In 1978 Shuen-fu Lin and Larry Schulz published The Tower of Myriad Mirrors: A Supplement to Journey to the West by Tung Yüeh (1620–1686) (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Research Publishing), which was later reprinted by the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies in Ann Arbor (2000). Our new version represents the text from the thorough variorum edition by Li. This has allowed a greater precision in translating the text of the novel itself. Our new English rendition includes all of the paratextual materials from the original edition, including the commentary and all of its illustrations; they will allow our modern readers greater insight into how the novel was originally understood and appreciated. We also include comments and evaluations from the nineteenth-century edition to reveal how the novel was interpreted long after its creation, at a much different time. Our project seeks to provide a more detailed contextualization of the novel in literary and social terms, including its textual history and the controversy over its authorship; again, our purpose was to recreate more fully the cultural milieu in which the novel was produced and originally circulated.

Qiancheng Li produced the first draft of the translation, which was then edited and revised by Robert Hegel. Thereafter we passed this revision back and forth several times as we polished, refined, and clarified our rendition to reach the version you see here.

Having corresponded about Further Adventures for over two decades, and both of us having published studies of the novel, it seemed only logical that we—Li and Hegel—should collaborate on a complete new English version. It has been a delight to work through this brief but very dense text with the attention to detail demanded by literary translation; together and separately we discovered previously overlooked nuances and subtleties on virtually every page. We hope that we have passed on to our readers some of the delight that this text and our collective labor on it have brought to us.