THE AUTHOR 

WU CHENG’EN (1500-82), a Ming Dynasty novelist, also named Ruzhong and Mountain Man of Sheyang, was born in Shanyang (present-day Huai’an, Jiangsu Province). Beginning in his childhood, he was an avid reader of tales of the supernatural. After repeated failure in imperial examinations, he became a Tribute Student in the mid Jiajing Period (1522-66) and at the end of this period was appointed county assistant in Changxing, Zhejiang Province. Tiring of his official career in his old age, he repudiated it to immerse himself in writing. Based his work on folk legends and previous works, he accomplished his classic mythological novel Journey to the West. His refined poems and essays convey his resentment towards the social reality of his time. Still extant are his works Journey to the West and Works of Master Sheyang.

 THE TRANSLATOR 

W.J.F. (BILL) JENNER, born in 1940, is an English sinologist specialising in history and culture, and translator of Chinese literature. He earned his Oxford PhD for a thesis on the history of the great city of Luoyang in the 5th-6th century AD. From 1963 to 1965 he was a translator at the Foreign Languages Press, for which he translated From Emperor to Citizen, a ghosted autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi—the last emperor of China. From 1979 to 1985 he returned to the FLP most summers to complete Journey to the West and to do other translations for the Press and its sister organization Panda Books. Since 1965 he has taught Chinese studies in universities, mainly the University of Leeds and the University of East Anglia.

His other books include Modern Chinese Stories, edited and translated with Gladys Yang (Oxford Univeristy Press, 1970); Memories of Loyang; Yang Hsuan-chih and the lost capital, 493-534 (Clarendon Press, 1981); Lu Xun: Selected Poems (FLP, 1982); and The Tyranny of History: the Roots of China’s Crisis (Penguin Press, 1992).