The cultural adaptation from Journey to the West to A Chinese Odyssey — A new text responding to the rise of Postmodernism in mainland China

Charlie FUNG
Nov 5 · 6 min read

A Chinese Odyssey is a pair of films, directed by Jeffrey Lau and starring Stephen Chow, the most iconic film star in Hong Kong. The first movie in the duology is A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora’s Box (西遊記第壹佰零壹回之月光寶盒) and the second is A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (西遊記大結局之仙履奇緣). The films are loosely adapted from Journey to the West (西遊記) which is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature and was written by Wu Cheng’en and published in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty. The loose adaption is not faithful to the original but it represented certain ideology on the mainland China.

The Chinese economic reform in 80s didn’t only open the acceptance of foreign economic exchange, but also the acceptance of foreign culture. The generation born in 80s grew with cultural nutrition from foreign. Their acceptance to new culture is much larger than old generation. A Chinese Odyssey is speaking new generation’s language which old generation can’t accept. The generation born in 80s were too young to create the social atmosphere at 1994. Thus, the film did poor boxoffice in official theatrical release at 1994. The time had arrived after years when the generation born in 80s captured the cultural discursive power through rise of internet in late 90s. Mass culture were finally able to accept the film which was phenomenal years after official theatrical release.

Postmodernity

The story of A Chinese Odyssey is loosely based on the original text Journey to the West which has 100 chapters. The chapters 1–99 is an episodic adventure story in which the Monk Xuanzang sets out to bring back Buddhist scriptures from Vulture Peak in India, but encounters various evils along the way. Chapter 100, the last of all, quickly describes the return journey to the Tang Empire, and the aftermath in which each traveler receives a reward in the form of posts in the bureaucracy of the heavens. The film A Chinese Odyssey stated it’s the chapter 101, which doesn’t exist in the original text, in the opening title. Its story also rewrote the original adventure story to the love story happened after 500 years (it mixed with slapstick comedy and wuxia but love is the major discourse of the story.). This loose adaption destroyed and reconstructed the original text which is not quoted but imitated. Jameson states that Plato’s conception of the ‘simulacrum’ — the identical copy for which no original has ever existed (66). Simulacrum is one of commonly used keywords in postmodernism studies. Therefore, the postmodernism approach will be used to explore the potentialities of this cultural adaption of A Chinese Odyssey.

Intertextuality

Adaptation is already a kind of intertextuality, the relationship between original text, the novel Journey to the West and another text, the film A Chinese Odyssey. Moreover, there are also other intertextuality between A Chinese Odyssey and other texts, another Hong Kong film director Wong Kar Wai’s films Chungking Express and Ashes of Time.

The most impressive line from protagonist Joker (starring Stephen Chow) in A Chinese Odyssey:

1. (VO): At this time, the sword is close to me 0.01cm I think. But after 0.01 seconds, the owner of the sword will fall for me. This is because I’ve decided to tell lies. Although I have told many lies before, this is the best, I think.

2. Joker: I have had my best love before but I didn’t treasure her. When I lose her, I fell regretful. It is the most painful matter in this world…..If God can give me another chance. I will say 3 words to her. I love you. If you have to give a time limit to this love. I hope it is 10 thousand year.

Those lines are responding to Wong Kar Wai’s films Chungking Express. In Chungking Express, there are lines:

1. (Wu’s VO): This was the closest we ever got. Just 0.01cm between us. But 57 hours later, I fell in love with this woman.

2. (Wu’s VO): If memory could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for 10 thousand year.

This dialogue is not only feedback, but the parody of the original text (Chungking Express). The line 1 in Chungking Express is about ridiculousness and conflict between physical and spiritual distance of two strangers. Two strangers with only 0.01cm close physical distance have a far spiritual distance. But the spiritual distance will be shorten (Wu fell in love with the woman) only 57 hours later. The line 2 in Chungking Express is a doubt about eternity of memory and love. Protagonist “hope” the memory could last for 10 thousand year which means eternity here. And the hope here is not a real hope but a hope never achieve.

The lines in A Chinese Odyssey is not a quotation but imitation of the lines in Chungking Express. Because the meanings of the original text just mentioned disappeared totally, the feeling of parody appear through the repetition of text in different situations and style (serious in Chungking Express, playful in A Chinese Odyssey.) This treatment embodied postmodernism’s lack of originality (imitation) and playfulness (parody).

Another intertextuality is with Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time. In Ashes of Time, One third of the story is about Murong Yin/Yang (Starring Lin Qingxia). At first it appears as if Yin and Yang are brother and sister, the brother wanting to kill Huang Yaoshi (starring Tony Leung Ka Fai) for rejecting his sister, and the sister wanting to kill her brother for interfering with her relationship. As it turns out, however, Yin-Yang are one and the same physical person, who has developed a severe split personality disorder because of Huang’s rejection of Murong’s love. (Gotterdammerung, “film reviews: ashes-of-time”). In A Chinese Odyssey, the protagonist Zixia and her sisters Qingxia share the same physical body, and split another personality who wants to kill another personality. The imitation is not only the plot (split personality wanting kill each other), but also the name of character, Qingxia, in A Chinese Odyssey is directly refer to name of actress, Lin Qingxia, in Ashes of Time.

The split personality in Ashes of Time is about the insanity following lost loves, the escapism of collapse of ego. It could be understood as the defence mechanism in Freudian’s psychoanalytic theory. Such discourse could not be found in Chinese Odyssey, but the nature of game, and lightness is left. As same as the case of intertextuality with Chungking Express, imitation in A Chinese Odyssey replaced the seriousness by playfulness. The replacement of seriousness in A Chinese Odyssey embodied postmodernism which is the effacement of the frontier between high culture and mass or commercial culture (Jameson 54). Lost of seriousness in A Chinese Odyssey lost of aura of high culture in Wong Kar Wai’s art house cinema.

Pastiche

Pastiche is quite commonly found in Hong Kong cinema (Chan 258). Pastiche is ubiquitous in A Chinese Odyssey. The genre is difficult to defined for A Chinese Odyssey because different genre exist in the film. The major discourse of the film is about love, but love story is not the only genre used in here. The beginning of the film has the setting up with Wuxia style, a inn in Desert having a group of bandits, and battle with outsider who is a fierce robber. The plot of Joker hit by Kunlun Sage’s seven ultimate fists (Kunlun san sheng, qi shang quan 崑崙三聖,七傷拳) is originally from Jin Yong’s wuxia novel The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber. Moreover in the first fighting scene, Zixia and others used music instruments as the weapon which is from Ni Kuang’s wuxia novel Liu zhi qin mo. The character Old Black Mountain Devil (Heishan lao yao 黑山老妖) is originally come from the supernatural tales novel, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai Zhiyi 聊齋誌異) written by Pu Songling during the early Qing Dynasty.

Cultural Adaption

The existence of pastiche elements doesn’t affect the structure of story at all actually. The lightness of such pastiche embody Jameson’s idea on Pastiche in Postmodernism as “blank parody” (Jameson 65) and consist with the lost of seriousness due to intertextuality mentioned before. The phenomenal popularity of A Chinese Odyssey strongly respond to rise of Postmodernism in mainland China. The timeliness of this adaption bestow the cultural meaning to the text. The adaption is not the copy of originality through the reconstruction, but the cultural adaption generated a new text responding to the contemporary culture.

References

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Print.

McRobbie, Angela. Postmodernism and popular culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Chan, Natalia Sui Hung. “Rewriting History: Hong Kong Nostalgia Cinema and Its Social Practice Natalia Chan Sui Hung” The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity. Poshek Fu, David Desser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 252. Print.

Jin, Yong. “The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber (Yi tian tu long ji)” Hong Kong: Ming he she, 2007. Print.

Pu Songling. “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai Zhiyi)”Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 2009. Print.

A Chinese odyssey. Part one, Pandora’s box. Jeffrey Lau. Media Asia Group, 1997. DVD.

A Chinese odyssey part two : Cinderella. Jeffrey Lau. Media Asia Group, 1997. DVD.

Charlie FUNG

Written by

Filmmaker, Film Studies. Graduated from Department of Comparative Literature at Hong Kong University and Beijing Film Academy.

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