Fourteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

An old missionary student of China once remarked that Chinese history is “remote, monotonous, obscure, and-worst of all-there is too much of it.” China has the longest continuous history of any country in the world—3,500 years of written history. And even 3,500 years ago China’s civilization was old! My paper examines The Journey to the West 西游记 and The Monkey and the Monk 獼猴王, one of the greatest Chinese classics published during the Ming Dynasty. It is a critical analysis of the Russian Order of the Moscow Patriarchate (Русская православная церковь) and an extended account, set in China, 7th century AD of the legendary pilgrimage of Tang Dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang who traveled to the “Western Regions”—geography and economy of “Slav and Slavic Romanticism” in and between the places along the route, to obtain Buddhist sūtra (sacred texts) and return after many trials and much suffering. The four main characters, Sun Wukong or Monkey King, Tang Sanzang or Tripitaka, Zhu Bajie or Pigsy, Sha Wujing or Sandy, were recorded in Great Tang Records in the Western Regions for their 19-year journey of Chang’an in Chinese Confucius and Taoist historiography. This is an early draft of my third book, in which I present four Chinese folk and literary traditions—homophobia, ethnocentrism/ethnocentricity, parochialism, and racism—that challenge the history of racial formation.