Did Wu Cheng'en Really Write Journey to the West? The Ming Poet Behind the Monkey King

Failing the imperial examinations

In Ming China the road to status ran through the imperial examinations, which selected officials, often called mandarins. Wu sat the exams several times and never passed. Only in middle age did he enter the imperial university in Nanjing, and through that route he finally obtained official posts, including positions in Beijing and in Changxing County.

He did not enjoy the work. Disillusioned with politics and with corruption among officials, he resigned and most likely spent the rest of his life in Huai'an, writing stories and poems. He stayed poor, had no children, and for long periods lived almost as a hermit. It is tempting to see this frustration in Journey to the West, where the heavenly bureaucracy is often pompous, slow and easy to mock, but that link is an interpretation, not a documented fact.

A "defiant spirit"

Most of Wu's poems and stories are lost. One known work is A Record of the Tripods of Emperor Yu, a book of strange tales for which he wrote a preface. After his death a relative gathered his surviving manuscripts into four volumes called Remaining Manuscripts of Mr. Sheyang, and some of his poems appeared in Ming poetry anthologies.

His writing is described as stubborn and critical of social corruption. In one surviving poem he calls himself a person with a "defiant spirit", and the emotional force of his verse has led critics to compare him with the Tang poet Li Bai. In the Tripods preface he insisted that his book was not only about the supernatural but also about human weaknesses, an idea that fits Journey to the West very well.

Why the novel was anonymous

Journey to the West was first printed in 1592 in Nanjing by the Shidetang publishing house, and that edition is the earliest that survives. No author's name appeared on it. That was normal at the time: fiction was widely considered vulgar, and an educated man had little to gain by signing it. Writing in the vernacular, rather than in the classical prose style admired by the literary elite, was itself a break with fashion.

The story was also much older than any single writer. Tales of the pilgrimage had circulated for centuries in oral storytelling and earlier written versions, including Southern Song texts and material in the Yongle Encyclopedia of 1408. Whoever produced the 100-chapter novel was shaping and expanding an existing tradition, not inventing it from nothing.

Hu Shih and the case for Wu

For more than three centuries most readers in China did not know who had written the book, although people in Huai'an attributed it to their local poet early on. In the early twentieth century the scholar Hu Shih and his students studied the text and Qing-era records and proposed Wu as the author. In his introduction to Arthur Waley's abridged translation Monkey, Hu pointed to a Huai'an local gazetteer of 1625 that listed Wu as the author of a work called Journey to the West.

The doubters

Not everyone was convinced. David Lattimore of Brown University noted that the gazetteer does not say the work was a novel; it could refer to any version of the story, even a short travel account. The translator W. J. F. Jenner observed that the novel contains no political knowledge beyond what a well-read commoner might have, and that so much of the legend already existed in folk tales that it is hard to say how much Wu created and how much he compiled.

Reference works reflect this caution. The Dictionary of Ming Biography calls the authorship "still open to question", while Anthony C. Yu, who made the first complete English translation, considers Wu "the most likely" candidate. Many scholars accept Wu as the author of the canonical 1592 version while acknowledging its folk sources.

What the novel is about

The novel loosely follows a real journey. The monk Xuanzang left Chang'an in 629, defying a ban on travel, spent about thirteen years in India and returned in 646 with Buddhist scriptures, which he then helped translate. In the novel he becomes Tang Sanzang, a pious but helpless monk escorted by supernatural disciples.

The 100 chapters fall into four unequal parts: Sun Wukong's birth from a stone and his rebellion against Heaven, which ends with the Buddha trapping him under a mountain for 500 years (chapters 1–7); Sanzang's background and his mission (8–12); the long journey itself (13–99); and the arrival and reward (100). Along the way Sanzang must survive 81 tribulations before he can reach Buddhahood.

The pilgrims as a portrait of human nature

Each disciple has a personality and, for many readers, an allegorical meaning. Sun Wukong, master of 72 transformations, is often read as the restless human mind, kept in check by a headband that tightens when a mantra is recited. Zhu Bajie, a greedy and lazy pig, stands for base appetites; Sha Wujing is the loyal peacemaker; and the White Dragon Horse, a dragon prince who carries the monk, represents the will. That reading fits Wu's claim that his tales were really about human weaknesses.

From Huai'an to the whole world

Journey to the West is counted among the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, and its characters, above all Sun Wukong, have inspired countless films, TV series, manga, animations and video games. English readers can choose between Arthur Waley's abridged Monkey (1942), the complete translations by Anthony C. Yu (1977–83) and W. J. F. Jenner (1982–84), and Julia Lovell's selective Monkey King (2021). Recent adaptations range from the 1986 CCTV series to the 2024 video game Black Myth: Wukong.

Whether or not Wu wrote every chapter, the image of a poor, proud poet in Huai'an, laughing at officials through a monkey who defies Heaven, has become part of the book's legend.

Learn with Wu Cheng'en: English phrases about journeys and trouble

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to go through thick and thin	to stay together in good and bad times	The pilgrims went through thick and thin.
to monkey around	to behave in a silly or playful way	Stop monkeying around and help me.
to keep someone in check	to control someone	The headband kept Wukong in check.
an open question	something not yet decided	The authorship is still an open question.
to give credit to someone	to say someone did something	Scholars gave credit to Wu Cheng'en.

Try this: Imagine you are one of the four pilgrims. Write three English sentences about your journey, using "go through thick and thin" and "keep someone in check".