西Xī游Yóu记Jì · Journey to the West

Xiyou Ji (Journey to the West) is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, attributed to Wu Cheng'en (c. 1500–1582) and first printed in 1592. It retells the historical 7th-century pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang to India for Buddhist scriptures — the same Xuanzang whose 649 translation of the Heart Sutra is in this library — but recast as a fantastic journey peopled by Sun Wukong (the Monkey King), Zhu Bajie (Pigsy), and Sha Wujing, all of them reformed supernatural beings serving as Xuanzang's disciples and protectors. The novel works on two levels: a comic adventure story that has made it the most globally famous of the Four Great Novels (multiple film and anime adaptations, including Dragon Ball's origin), and a layered allegory drawing on Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian imagery simultaneously. Where Sanguo Yanyi is masculine, historical, and idiomatic, Xiyou Ji is mythological, religious, and archetypal — they are useful complements in this library's fiction selection. Placeholder: the Chinese exists on wikisource but is not yet ingested; an aligned English seeding has not been chosen.