H-Buddhism Breitwieser Goehr on Dong and Dong, 'Further Adventures on the Journey to the West' Review published on Friday, May 21, 2021 Yue Dong, Sizhang Dong. Further Adventures on the Journey to the West. Translated by Qiancheng Li and Robert E. Hegel. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. 278 pp. $30.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-295-74772-9. Reviewed by Alia Breitwieser Goehr (The University of Chicago) Published on H-Buddhism (May, 2021) Commissioned by Jessica Zu (USC Dornsife, School of Religion) Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=56160 A Journey through Myriad Realms of Desire, with Nothing Wanting As Qiancheng Li states in the introduction to his and Robert Hegel’s translation, “Further Adventures on the Journey to the West (Xiyou bu 西遊補, 1641) is a short but philosophically and artistically sophisticated novel” (p. xiii). Thanks to the erudition and meticulous care with which the translators have breathed life into this novel’s fresh incarnation, this sophistication is now in full evidence for any reader of English. Li and Hegel’s contribution affords a valuable opportunity to teachers of East Asian and world literatures, for this work’s brevity and complexity make it uniquely well suited to introducing students and scholars outside the field to early modern Chinese thought—in all of its historical particularity, with all of its lasting intellectual and aesthetic appeal. This translation leads readers onto a journey through myriad realms of desire, with nothing wanting. That the translators manage to conjure this novel into English in the form of a self-sustainingly excellent work of art is remarkable given that the sixteen-chapterFurther Adventures, as its title would suggest, arose out of a relation of dependence on the longer and more famous Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西遊記, 1592). The earlier, hundred-chapter novel is an extravagantly fictionalized account of the monk Xuanzang’s 玄奘 (602-64) historical excursion to Buddhist lands. InJourney to the West, Xuanzang travels in the company of a handful of monsters-turned-disciples, most notably Sun Wukong 孫悟空, a mischievous, violence-prone monkey endowed with cosmic superpowers and a capacity for enlightenment. Partway through the pilgrims’ journey, in chapters 59 through 61, their path westward is blocked by a mountain of flames. Hoping to extinguish this impenetrable fire, Sun Wukong visits Lady Rākṣasī, the wife of his former sworn brother, to borrow a palm-leaf fan. When Lady Rākṣasī refuses, the monkey transforms into an insect and torments her by crawling into her belly. He subsequently obtains the fan and puts out the flames so the pilgrims can continue their mission. As Qiancheng Li points out, from the standpoint of Buddhist symbolism this is an unsatisfying resolution, for “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” (p. xvi). The author of Further Adventures, whom Qiancheng Li conclusively identifies as Dong Sizhang 董斯張 (1587-1628), pursued a more meaningful resolution to this symbolically charged narrative episode. Citation: H-Net Reviews. Breitwieser Goehr on Dong and Dong, 'Further Adventures on the Journey to the West'. H-Buddhism. 05-21-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/reviews/7751645/breitwieser-goehr-dong-and-dong-further-adventures-journey-west Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Buddhism The intercalary narrative of his sequel, which occurs between chapters 61 and 62 of the parent novel, forces Sun Wukong (now named Pilgrim 行者) to confront precisely that which he evades in Journey to the West by drawing him into a dream journey through manifold realms of desire. In so doing, Dong weaves a complex psychological narrative exploring the themes of desire, dream, and illusion that permeate early modern Chinese aesthetics; and he does so in a manner profoundly informed by late- Ming Buddhist discourse. At the center of Pilgrim’s varied forays into delusion stands the Gallery of a Million Mirrors (wanjing loutai 萬鏡樓台), each mirror of which contains an entire world, several of which Pilgrim enters. The Gallery is at once a brilliant literary conceit and a figure derived from the “Chapter on Entry into the Realm of Reality” (Ru fajie pin 入法界品, Skt. Gaṇḍavyūha), the climax of the Flower Ornament Sutra (Huayan jing 華嚴經, Skt. Buddhâvataṃsaka-sūtra).[1] For some reason, the translators do not explicitly reference this source, though Qiancheng Li discusses it at some length in the introduction to his excellent Chinese variorum edition of the novel (which this reviewer deems a must-have for any Chinese fiction enthusiast). In the sutra, the pilgrim Sudhana enters the Tower of Maitreya, an architectural figuration of the original mind as Suchness, wherein three thousand worlds can appear in a single thought instant. Early in his journey, our simian Pilgrim comes upon the Gallery in the land of New Tang—a counterpart to the historical Tang dynasty in which the parent novel is set. By means of the Gallery’s mirrors, Pilgrim journeys through diverse realms in a manner that defies conventional and corporeal logic, swiftly transiting through a sensuously evocative array of situations, all of which are ultimately but projections of his own desire. The demon of Pilgrim’s desire achieves its apotheosis in the image of the Qing Fish qingyu( 鯖魚, whose name is a compound of homophones for desire, qing 情 and yu 欲), which Pilgrim battles face-to-face at the end of the novel to symbolically defeat his attachments to delusion. The temporal and spatial fluidity of these scenes, as well as the uncanny ways they interweave familiar episodes from history and literature with spectacular new layers of fabulation, seem aimed to disorient the reader alongside the desire-entangled Pilgrim. And yet, through an array of expedient strategies, Li and Hegel manage to illuminate the delicate threads that render this work coherent to a degree unrealized in its earlier English translation. For one, the translators seem to have a strong conception of who Pilgrim is. This clarity of character may have been bolstered by the fact that the translators drew on Qiancheng Li’s Chinese variorum edition of Further Adventures (Xiyou bu jiaozhu 《西游补》校注, 2011), not to mention the literary and philosophical insight Robert Hegel has gleaned from his decades-long engagement with the novel, upon which he wrote his MA thesis. Their shared labor contributes to the reader’s pleasure: Pilgrim’s distinctive presence is clearly felt throughout the story, such that the reader has a stable companion on this dream journey, even as the dreamworld through which they venture together is topsy-turvy. Throughout the novel, the thread that runs throughout the dazzling tapestry of the monkey’s mindscape is desire, which glimmers upon the page through homophones of qing, flashes of crimson, and manifold other symbols of that which, according to Buddhist teachings, traps beings in saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death. The translators graciously assist the reader in keeping track of this constant thread by noting in parentheses those places where qing and its homophones appear and with endnotes that alert the uninitiated to the many faces of desire in Chinese symbolism. Citation: H-Net Reviews. Breitwieser Goehr on Dong and Dong, 'Further Adventures on the Journey to the West'. H-Buddhism. 05-21-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/reviews/7751645/breitwieser-goehr-dong-and-dong-further-adventures-journey-west Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Buddhism The work’s coherence is further enhanced by the translators’ decision to incorporate two historical commentaries into the text (also present in the Chinese variorum edition). Such commentaries, normally printed in the upper margins of the page or in line with the text, were a common feature of Ming- and Qing-dynasty publications but are often excised from modern editions and translations. Li and Hegel have thankfully abandoned this modern convention to include the commentaries from the Ming Chongzhen-era and Qing-dynasty Kongqingshi 空青室 editions of the novel (published in 1641 and 1853, respectively). The Chongzhen commentary, which David Rolston attributes to Dong Sizhang himself, are relatively restrained. They occasionally point out narrative features but often just remark enthusiastically on the text. Such comments resemble the general approach Dong’s friend Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 (1574-1646) employed in his vernacular story collections of the 1620s. The Kongqingshi commentary, by contrast, intercedes far more frequently and at greater length. While the Kongqingshi edition was a collaborative effort, Qiancheng Li explains that the bulk of these comments were the work of Qian Peiming 錢培名 (nineteenth century, dates unknown). In certain aspects of phrasing as well as their emphasis on clarifying the narrative’s literary and philosophical coherence, Qian’s comments betray the influence of the famous seventeenth-century commentator Jin Shengtan 金聖歎 (1608-61). While some present-day readers might initially find this additional voice obtrusive, Qian’s comments are often both funny and helpful, contributing to the original work’s entertainment value while also illuminating how disparate moments in the text relate to one another or to the parent novel. Those approaching this novel from an interdisciplinary or intellectual historical standpoint should also note that the Kongqingshi commentary foregrounds the work’s Buddhist implications, such that the novel seems to operate simultaneously as a literary and philosophical work. The author--a dedicated lay Buddhist who taught his son to recite Buddhist sūtras before instructing him in the Confucian classics--clearly intended his readers to engage in this sort of interdiscursive reading.