Journey to the West, Part 4: Black Wind Mountain, the Bear Monster

Author: Chen Weidong (Editor)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features: The Four Great Classical Novels of China are already familiar to everyone in daily life. From novels to operas, comic strips to animated cartoons, TV dramas to films, they have been repeatedly presented through various media, their influence permeating all aspects of people's lives. The clever Monkey King, the stubborn Tang Monk, the lazy Pigsy, the wise Zhuge Liang, the ambitious Cao Cao, the warrior Wu Song, the roguish Lu Zhishen, the sentimental Baoyu, and many other vivid artistic figures have perfectly blended tradition and classics in people's consciousness, forming an eternal legacy. In contemporary times, the Four Great Classical Novels are no longer just beautiful legends, much like how we once proudly possessed the Four Great Inventions. Today, in the cultural market, this tradition and classic are almost squeezed out of existence by characters like Doraemon, Dragon Ball, Crayon Shin-chan, and Hello Kitty. "Classics" are gradually fading from the perspective of the younger generation, tradition feels distant and unfamiliar, consumer values are being overturned, and the era of cartoons is upon us. When cartoon creators and audiences grow accustomed to foreign culture, they are suddenly embarrassed to discover that something they have lost—tradition—is being repeatedly reinterpreted in Japanese cartoons. For example, works like Yoshio Hayashi's Water Margin, Kiyotaro Kubota's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the young Goku in Dragon Ball, and Tatsuya Terada's Journey to the West: Great Monkey King have breathed new vitality into Chinese traditional classics in Japanese cartoons. Meanwhile, neglected traditional culture is shining brightly in a foreign land, and classics find themselves in an awkward predicament. The creation and publication of The Illustrated Treasury of the Four Great Classical Novels reflect the ten-year journey of cartoon localization in China, the overall improvement in understanding among domestic publishers and readers, and more importantly, the enhanced creativity and production capabilities of cartoon creators. We sense that the market is trending towards a healthy cycle, and we are also delighted to see the flourishing development of domestic cartoon studios. Without a healthy market mechanism, there would be no space for the survival of The Illustrated Treasury of the Four Great Classical Novels; without cartoon production studios of the scale of Shenjie, this work would not have seen the light of day. We hope to work with readers to create a bright future for the localization of Chinese cartoons and the promotion of national traditional culture.