Wu Chengen

Also known as Zi Ruzhong · Hao She Yang Shan Ren

Wu Cheng'en, courtesy name Ruzhong, styled the Recluse of Sheyang, came from Shanyang in Huai'an prefecture (modern Huai'an, Jiangsu). Known young for his writing but repeatedly failing the provincial examinations, he became a tribute student in the Jiajing reign, and late in life served as assistant magistrate of Changxing in Zhejiang and, by some accounts, as a tutor to the Prince of Jing. His collection of strange tales, the Yuding zhi, is lost except for its preface, and after his death Qiu Du gathered his poems and prose as the Sheyang xiansheng cungao. The hundred-chapter Journey to the West (Xiyou ji) printed by the Shide Tang in Nanjing in 1592 names no author; the Tianqi-era Huai'an gazetteer lists a Xiyou ji under Wu's name, and in the 1920s Hu Shi and Lu Xun assigned the novel to him on that basis. Huang Yuji's early Qing catalogue files Wu's Xiyou ji under geography, so some scholars think it was a travel record, and the question remains open.