Wu Cheng'en in the Ming Dynasty (1500-1582) was named Ruzhong, Huaihai Shi Lang and Sheyang Mountain. A native of Shanyang County, Huai 'an Prefecture (now Huai 'an District, Huai 'an City, Jiangsu Province). China, an outstanding novelist in Ming Dynasty, wrote The Journey to the West, one of China's classical Four Great Classical Novels, which was translated into the world language. Wu Cheng'en created a lot of works in his life, but most of his works were lost because of his poor family and childless. According to records, there is also a collection of strange stories, Ding Yu Ji, which has been lost. Wu Cheng'en's nephew, Sun Xiaoqiu, collected his only remaining manuscripts, only "one thousandth", including one volume of poetry and three volumes of prose. Later generations compiled his poems into yin and yang manuscripts.
[Literary Works] Journey to the West
The Journey to the West was written by Wu Cheng'en, a novelist in the Ming Dynasty. According to the records of the Western Regions in Tang Dynasty, folklore and Yuan Zaju. The Song Dynasty's Poem of Sanzang's Learning from the Scriptures (whose real name is Sanzang's Learning from the Scriptures) is the earliest prototype of The Journey to the West, and the Tang Priest took Master Xuanzang as the prototype.
As the first romantic novel in ancient China, this book profoundly depicts the social reality at that time, and it is the pioneering work of magical realism. First, I wrote that the Monkey King was born, and then I met Tang Priest, Pig Bajie and Friar Sand, but I mainly described that the Monkey King, Pig Bajie and Friar Sand protected Tang Priest from Buddhist scriptures. From reincarnation to learning Buddhism, Tang Priest went through eighty-one difficulties, all the way down to the devil, and finally arrived in the Western Heaven to meet the Tathagata Buddha, and finally the five saints died.
Since the advent of The Journey to the West, it has been widely circulated among the people, and various versions have emerged one after another. There were six editions in Ming Dynasty, seven editions and manuscripts in Qing Dynasty, and thirteen lost editions of ancient books. After the Opium War, a large number of China classical literary works were translated into western languages and gradually spread to Europe and America. There are already English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, sign language, cosmopolitanism, Russian, Czech, Romanian, Polish, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. He also published many research papers and monographs, and made a very high evaluation of this novel. Known as one of the classical Four Great Classical Novels in China.