AN UNENDING “JOURNEY” | 永不过时的西游
By Meredith Derecho, MC‘18
《西游记》是中国文学的经典作品之一,不但艺术水平很高,而且包含着佛道两教的教义,颇有道德教育的价值。这本属于中国四大名著之一的小说写于16世纪明朝中期,跟今天的流行文化有什么关系呢?
实际上,《西游记》在中国的流行文化中比比皆是。有好几本漫画和好几部电影及电视剧都是以《西游记》为题材的。最突出的要属一部叫《西游记》的电视剧。目前中国的大学生小时候几乎都看过这部在八十年代拍摄的电视剧。
《西游记》活泼生动的故事情节是它取得巨大成功的重要原因。出乎读者意料的是,这部电视剧并没有把《西游记》简化;原作的道德教育和价值观几乎全部被保留下来了。目前在哈工大四年级的小梁跟我说,看《西游记》对他来说是“正义感的启蒙”。一位叫怡然的同学还告诉我,通过把一些行为定义为妖怪之举,比如利用色相诱惑人,《西游记》其实间接地影响了读者的道德观。什么可做,什么不可做,什么是善,什么又是恶,一目了然。再有,《西游记》的主人公 — — 唐三藏、孙悟空、猪八戒和沙悟净 — — 也都活灵活现。在中国很红的“大话西游”也借用了这些人物作为原型。
孙悟空这个猴子在电视剧中生动且写实。这个聪明而顽皮的人物格外的迷人,在中国的流行文化到处都是。他甚至出现于“Dota”与“英雄联盟” — — 世界上两个最热门的电子游戏之中。
2015年夏天,《大圣归来》 — — 一部以孙悟空为主的漫画电影在中国上映了。这部电影算是中国动画片上的突破。我那时候在哈尔滨上学,所以跟几个朋友一起去看了。电影的情节有新的创作,不过跟原作也颇有呼应。我的朋友被电影感动得热泪盈眶。对他们来说,这部电影既表现中国文化的重要组成部分,又给他们带来童年的回忆。我在乌鲁木齐的时候还看了《西游 • 降魔篇》。在这部电影里唐僧是主角,但是情节跟原作相距甚远,是一部娱乐气息较浓的电影。
在我看来,这几个例子足以说明《西游记》在当代中国文化中的流行程度。除了《西游记》之外,还有不少古典小说或人物也频繁出现于流行文化中。比如说,同属于四大名著之一的《三国演义》也经常作为电子游戏的题材,例如“三国杀”和“真‘dota’三国无双”系列。再比方说,中国历史上著名的诗人,如李白和杜甫,在网上有各种搞笑的贴图和表情包。
在西方文化中,恐怕没有可相比较的例子:莎士比亚戏剧中的人物并不会出现于主流的电子游戏或小孩子看的电视剧里。在我看来,跟西方相比,中国文化更看重国家的历史及古典文学,而《西游记》的流行也是这个特点的一种体现。
TRANSLATION
Journey to the West is one of China’s great works of literature — this may not do it justice, but here’s a crash course: Tang Sanzang, a Buddhist monk, needs to retrieve important sutras (ancient texts) from India. Unfortunately, the path is riddled with monsters that would really like to eat Tang Sanzang, and he is not the most clever monk. So Sun Wukong (the Monkey King), a mystical pig named Zhu Bajie, and a river ogre named Sha Wujing
help him on his journey.
The prose of the actual novel is of the highest caliber, invoking allegory as well as satire, and its story incorporates both Buddhist and Daoist teachings. A Western reader can compare it to a Shakespeare classic in terms of literary weight — in fact, it was first published within ten years of Romeo and Juliet — and to works like The Odyssey for its epic narrative.
I argue, though, that Journey to the West is much more accessible today in China than its counterparts are in the West. You would not expect Mercutio to charge you with his sword in League of Legends; the Monkey King, however, is the newest hero in DotA. My brother and I never spent Saturday mornings watching episodes of The Odyssey, but today’s college students in China grew up watching a live-action television show called (surprise) Journey to the West.
How did the novel attain such ubiquity in Chinese popular culture? I asked my friend Yiran, a student at Yale originally from southern China. She suggested that Journey to the West’s popularity has its roots in that live-action television show.
This adaptation of Journey to the West, which was produced in the eighties, is considered a classic; many students of our age watched it when they were younger. The show is remarkably faithful to the original novel’s plot points, antiquated language, and even moral teachings. My friend Yunxiang, a current senior at the Harbin Institute of Technology, even told me that, to him, seeing this show was “the awakening of my sense of justice.” In other words, Journey to the West needed no simplification to become an extremely popular television show in China, and its moralistic value might even strengthen its appeal.
Part of the timelessness of Journey to the West draws from a tradition — not unique to China — of piecing together an ethical framework from works of literature. I asked Yiran for her opinion on what kind of effect Journey to the West might have on someone’s moral compass. Commenting on the original novel, she said that by labeling certain actions as “things that monsters do,” Journey to the West subtly instils a sense of what is right and wrong, and, more broadly, what is good and evil.
Another success of the show, in addition to its faithfulness to the original novel, is the way in which actor Liu Xiao Ling Tong portrays the clever Monkey King in such a mischievous, lively, and engaging way. My friend David was raised in the U.S. in a Chinese family, and he grew up watching the show. One of David’s favorite scenes from the series shows the Monkey King wreaking havoc in a marketplace, cackling to himself while wearing a turquoise bathrobe. In my favorite episode, the Monkey King eats all of the best peaches in the heavenly peach garden and then uses his power of transformation to disguise himself as one of the fruit.
Other prominent Chinese texts also evoke animals and their cultural associations in order to make profound ideas more accessible. The Zhuangzi, one of the core texts of Daoism, is full of enough fish, tortoises, birds, and so on to make a graphic novel. A friend of mine named Shaoen, a Chinese major at the National University of Taiwan, told me that her class on Zhuangzi uses a manga-style illustrated textbook. Journey to the West is therefore also comparable to moralistic fables like the tales of the Anansi spider, but on a grander scale. The use of animals in these great Chinese works makes them more accessible, and could be another reason for the broad, modern appeal of Journey to the West.
Were it not for this television show, I asked Yiran, would Journey to the West still have such a prominent place in popular culture? She thought for a second, and then replied that the roots of Journey to the West’s popularity extend all the way to the Ming Dynasty, when Journey to the West was named one of China’s “Four Great Classical Novels.” Yiran said that ever since the novel acquired this prestigious designation, other authors have wanted to draw from its material.
As a result, dozens of plays, operas, cartoons and, of course, films revolve around Journey to the West. In 2015, for example, Monkey King: Hero is Back came out in theaters all over China. This animated feature stars the very same Monkey King, but with a new plot that picks up where Journey to the West left off. Previous Chinese animated movies had been lackluster, so the high animation quality and popularity of this movie made it a breakthrough in Chinese animation. Hero is Back pulled in $153 at the box office, making it the highest-grossing animated film in China then. I was taking classes at the Harbin Institute of Technology in northeast China at the time, so I went to see Hero is Back with some friends from the university. They were moved to tears by this cartoon action movie: for them, the film brought back childhood memories of the aforementioned television show Journey to the West, and it created a successful portrayal of an important part of Chinese culture.
In my opinion, this desire to tell and retell Journey to the West pulls from another Chinese literary tradition of giving your play, speech, or poem value by alluding to great works of the past. This long tradition of stories in China’s greatest literature, combined with the fundamental ethical appeal and accessibility of such tales, contributes to a cultural climate where great works like Journey to the West hold universal appeal.
Other important works and authors of Chinese literature come up frequently in Chinese pop culture as well. Romance of the Three Kingdoms — another member of China’s “Four Great Classical Novels,” — is the basis of popular games such as Dynasty Warriors and Legends of the Three Kingdoms. And Du Fu, a renowned poet from the Tang Dynasty, has been appearing all over the internet in meme form.
I do not mean to write off the hundreds of adaptations of Romeo and Juliet or the value of literature in Western culture. Shakespeare’s classics or other Western parallels, however, do not permeate Western popular culture to the same degree that classics such as Journey to the West do in China. Engaging characters, resonant lessons, and a favorable cultural climate are a few of the reasons why.
