Talk:Journey to the West

Style of Synopsis Section
Don't you guys think that the synopsis is way too conversational? 72.86.156.219 (talk) 07:07, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Stephen Chow To Make New Film
Yup, according to Hollywood reporter.com Stephen Chow of Chinese Odyssey, Kung Fu Hustle and CJ7 fame has got the go ahead to make a $100 million Journey To The West production in collaboration with China Film Group [CFG] and reportedly Will Smith will star. Blimey get me a cup of tea stat! Twobells (talk) 22:43, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

BBC adaption
The BBC has created an adaption (alternate link) of Journey to the West for its Olympics 2008 title animation. Their page about it contains a link to this Wikipedia article. GreenReaper (talk) 14:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Identity of Demon in Yellow Robe
In Journey to the West, the "Demon in Yellow Robe" is currently identified as "wood wolf of Gui (or Andromeda)" (and Andromeda is linking to a disambiguation page).

In the freeware English translation of Journey to the West that I'm working from (| Journey to the West, see page 443), the constellation that goes missing from heaven is described as "Strider, the wooden wolf". I think that relates to Kuí, or Legs (Chinese constellation), which roughly overlaps Andromeda (constellation).

Am I correct in identifying the Demon in Yellow Robe with Kuí/Legs? Or am I getting confused by the translations?

If I'm not confused by the translations, I'm inclined to change the identity of the demon to "wood wolf of Kuí (the Chinese constellation Legs)". But I thought I'd better check first. Tonyrex (talk) 23:20, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * :) No objections, so I'll make the change. Will use the pinyin "Kuí" for the link and pipe it to Legs (Chinese constellation). Tonyrex (talk) 08:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Split
I'd like to split the Media adaptations section off into a separate article, List of media adaptations of Journey to the West. This is because a) the current section takes up tons of space in the article, and makes the TOC huge; and b) having its own article would allow people to do more with it. Anyway, does anyone have any thoughts?

If I don't hear any objections within a day or so, I'll probably go ahead and do the split, just because I'm antsy. &mdash;Politizer talk / contribs 14:48, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * No responses, so I'm going to go ahead with the split. &mdash;Politizer talk / contribs 03:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Who is the main character in the story?
Can someone tell me who the main character (i.e. the Main protagonist) is? Neo Guyver (talk) 19:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Isn't that obvious from the article? It's Monkey. --Gwern (contribs) 01:06 31 December 2008 (GMT)


 * Okay, thank you for the answer. Neo Guyver (talk) 21:42, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Esoteric interpretation
Might be worth expanding on the religious interpretations of the Journey. From Clearly's Vitality Energy and Spirit: a Taoist Sourcebook, we read:

"'The last selection from Liu I-Ming's commentaries to be presented here is a set of extracts from his writings on Journey to the West, which has itself been translated into English as a 'folk novel' and does not seem to be generally recognized as an estoeric map of human development except among certain Buddhists and Taoists. Liu attributes the original work to the thirteenth-century Taoist master Ch'ang-ch'un (Changqun), one of the great disciples of Wang Che, founder of the Northern school of Complete Reality. Secular scholars vehemently deny this attribution, claiming ti derives from confusion with another book called Journey to the West recounting Ch'ang-ch'un's expedition to Mongolia. The two works are so different, however, as to render this theory absurd. What is more likely is that scholars who believed the work to be a 'folk novel' did not understand the inner content, which treats the most complex and sophisticated forms of Buddhism and Taoism. Fr centuries the stories of Journey to the West were current as a cycle of dramas, which were ultimately rewritten into the present form of a novel by Wu Ch'eng-en (Wu Chengen) in the sixteenth century. Currently available English translations are based on the 'folk novel' theory of the work, and do not reflect sensitivity to the technical inner meanings. In a set of remarkable essays, Liu I-ming explains how the text appears to the initiate.'"

The extracts themselves seem to've been typed up here; at least, they're correct insofar as I've checked them against my copy. --Gwern (contribs) 19:21 20 March 2009 (GMT)

Well, I am pretty sure that the protagonist is supposed to be the priest. and i think it should be Tang Shen —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.65.196.230 (talk) 15:55, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Historical Sequels to Xiyou ji
It is probably important to mention somewhere the several important historical sequels to the Ming dynasty novel, namely: Hou Xiyou ji (Later Record of the Westward Journey), Xu Xiyou ji (Sequel to the Westward Journey), and Dong Yue's Xiyou bu (Supplement to the Westward Journey).ChinaStudent (talk) 17:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I am currently writing an article for the Xiyoubu. I am close to finishing it, but I only work on it occasionally. I will add information about it to this page shortly. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 18:12, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

List of characters
I suggest that we create a page List of characters from Journey to the West for all the characters in the novel. The list of demons take up far too much space on this article so it'll be better to relocate them. We can add in all the various gods and deities on that list and make it even more complete. Isn't that better? Anyone in support of this idea? Lonelydarksky (talk) 10:07, 30 October 2009 (UTC)


 * This sounds like a good idea to me. I would keep the info about the main characters here, though. Bertport (talk) 13:37, 30 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Done. Please help to work on the list. It's incomplete and has a lot of potential for improvement. Thanks. Lonelydarksky (talk) 02:56, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Do we care / does this warrant a mention?
I'm not an experienced Wikipedian, so I thought I'd offer this up rather than add it myself - comments welcome: Neil Gaiman to adapt Journey to the West for film Pitchwife (talk) 19:23, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd say at this point it's only at the idea stage. Many plans do not come to fruition, many screenplays never get made into films and many films never make it out of production. Blogs are not seen as a reliable source, and even though this is Gaiman's own blog he may just have come back from the pub and knocking ideas around. Who Knows. So, I'd hold onto this for now and keep a weather eye on it. Best wishes Span (talk) 22:25, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * It's mentioned in Variety. Gaiman has been signed to write the script. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 23:16, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


 * So it's definitely worth mentioning in the Gaiman article but is it here? Hm... I may be a bit gunshy because the Neon Genesis Evangelion live-action movie has been sucking up space and news coverage for half a decade now without going anywhere & seems to finally be abandoned, but I'd rather see more movement than just a script before including it among all the actually completed movies & series. --Gwern (contribs) 15:48 30 March 2011 (GMT)

Doubted authorship source
I wanted to provide another source doubting Wu as the author. It is an article by Glen Dudbridge, a noted Xiyouji scholar. I don't have time to add the information, but I'm sure a more active editor could. The information starts on page 25 of this PDF article. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 19:08, 4 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Good source for the scholar. I'll add a reference to the version reprinted in a book of Dudbridge's papers. Don't think we need to add anything in the text, though, since most readers will only be interested in the conclusion. Anthony Yu summarizes the argument in any case. Is this ok? ch (talk) 05:12, 5 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. Thanks for adding the source to the page. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 11:15, 5 October 2012 (UTC)


 * THanks for the good suggestion! ch (talk) 18:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Anthony Yu is coming out with an updated translation of Journey to the West, including an expanded introduction. I believe the first volume comes out sometime this month. You might want to consult that for more information. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 22:40, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Gods, Demons, and Shenmo
There is an extensive discussion developing a consensus on the (formerly Shenmo now moved to) Gods and demons Talk Page. The gist of it is that the untranslated term "shenmo" does not mean anything to the reader and that Wikipedia policy in any case prefers English when possible.

In this article, I am not sure what even the English adds, and I would not object to cutting the sentence in the lede in order to move it and expand on it elsewhere, but that's another question.

The Introduction to Anthony Yu's one volume abridged translation, The Monkey and the Monk, doesn't use or refer to shenmo at all, so it seems that our leading living authority doesn't find the term necessary. He does use it on p. 96 of the Introduction to the revised four-volume edition, but in a way that needs much more explication than we have room or need for in the lede to this article. Cheers, ch (talk) 06:55, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, I also responded on the Talk Page. I agree that this term doesn't add much to the English-language article at all, since it is rarely used in English, and especially when it is categorizing a major work of literature from centuries ago using a modern neologism.  I think it should be removed or re-added in a separate section with an elaborated background information, something like modern scholarly evaluation.--Sevilledade (talk) 07:18, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It's common enough in Chinese-language literary criticism that Anthony Yu wrote that "for more than a couple of generations of Chinese critics, Lu Xun's classification of the Xiyouji as the chef-d'oeuvre among the novels of gods and demons (shenmo xiaoshuo) had served as a normative designation" in an article for the journal Asia Minor.(pdf) The question then is whether this has any relevance for an English-language article on the novel, and I would argue that it does, but in conjunction with what ch and Sevilledade have said, within the context of 20th century Chinese literary criticism. I'll write a brief summary on the history of Xiyouji literary criticism when I have the time.--Baudelaire Serene (talk) 10:37, 16 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Good, Baudelaire Serene, but also note that Yu used the same language in athe Introduction to the revised edition of the translation (Vol I p. 96). I agree that the term requires more explanation than is appropriate in the lead, however. The "gods and demons," I think, are the ones which are created or demolished by consciousness, as in the Heart Sutra, as translated, for instance, here . Yu quotes in his final paragraph (p. 96) of the Intro Guanyin's words in Ch. 17: "The Bodhisatva and the monster both exist in a single thought. Considered in terms of their origin, they are nothing." That is, the theme "gods and monsters" is central to Yu's reading of the novel and a key point of theology.


 * I look forward to your summary of the critical views, though I would suggest starting with the Qing critics who insisted that the work was an allegory (Monkey = Gold, etc.) in order to understand why Hu Shi insisted that it was not one, a persuasive view which misled Waley into thinking that this was just a "folk" novel (whatever that is). Yu's Intro to the revised translation is the most important and most accessible single piece on all these questions. If you haven't already, it would be worthwhile investing in it or checking a local university library. ch (talk) 05:09, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

dispute about adaption of Journey to the West in video games
There is a dispute in page Talk:List of media adaptations of Journey to the West. Someone delete the adaption in some games because these games only use the character (Monkey king, Sun wukong) not stories and should not be considered as a adaption. But the problem is the guideline of this article says the article list the adaption both stories and characters.Then Journey to the West in popular culture was merged in List of media adaptations of Journey to the West. It means this article also contains the popular elements related to Journey to the West. Hence, I think should not delete the games which used the character of this novel. Now there is no consensus and still have dispute. I hope more editors can see this discussion and put a comment. User talk:Miracle dream 22:49, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Changes to Sha Wujing section
This section is in reference to my recent changes. It's a common misconception that Sha wields a monk's spade. Chapter 22 describes him wielding a magic wooden staff:


 * For years my staff has enjoyed great fame,
 * At first an evergreen tree in the moon.
 * Wu Gang cut down from it one huge limb:
 * Lu Ban then made it, using all his skills.
 * Within the hub [is] one solid piece of gold:
 * Outside it’s wrapped by countless pearly threads.
 * It’s called the treasure staff for crushing fiends
 * […] (Wu & Yu, 2012, Vol. 1, p. 428)

Also, the name of the Flowing Sands River (流沙河) is a reference to the "Flowing Sands", an ancient name for the harsh desert area in northwestern China. Sha is originally based on an obscure desert demon associated with the area in religious and pre-Journey to the West literature going back to the 7th-century. See here for citations. Therefore, the idea that the Flowing Sands River is the same as the Kaidu River is an after the fact association. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 09:47, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Re: article referencing curation notice removal
Yes, articles generally need more citation references; however, inconsistent and too-easy application of tagging generally fails to improve articles, and instead discourages editors from working on them and readers to needlessly doubt accuracy. This affect is especially pronounced when the template inclusion appears to dominate the article by being the first item at the top. Does this really help? No, although the idea represents good faith effort and generally well-intended, this does not make the article better. Once someone does a little editing, they almost certainly are realizing the value of citation references, if they did not do so to begin with. We do not need relentless reminders. I recommend more and better referencing, but not by the method of placing article curation tags in every doubtful case; especially if, as in some cases, negligently left without follow-up, to let the chips fall where they may. Thus, differently gruntled, removing stale article curation inclusion template. Dcattell (talk) 18:52, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

final line in authorship section
Sorry I don't normally interact with wiki sites but I noticed that at the end of the authorship section it just says "Journey to the West is not actually written by Wu"

As a person who's not fully involved in this, I assume they're talking about Wu Cheng'en since he was mentioned earlier as a possible author, but then after that there's a larger paragraph where there are mentioned some reasons as for why it might not be.

So I was thinking that perhaps if someone felt so strongly about the subject to add the little addendum with such certainty, it might in that case be considered polite to add a source to such statements since when stated so bluntly it makes it sound like the person writing actually knows who wrote journey to the west and is insulted that someone would think it was Wu. Which of course is ridiculous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.253.166.40 (talk) 03:35, 23 February 2021 (UTC)