Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd.īrooks, Paul. And the reason why Tang Seng has such a powerful motivation resides in the impact on him of the drive gradually accumulated by the event of the Dragon King of the Jin River”. Although Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Sha Heshang play a key role in destroying demons and monsters, their actions are mainly driven by Tang Seng’s undaunted hope of obtaining Buddhist Scriptures. Once Tang Seng undertook the task to obtain Buddhist Scriptures in the West, he became a lion whose hope could not be contained by any force.” “ Journey to the West tells the story of obtaining Buddhist Scriptures. The consequences of this possibility gave rise to new and more serious possibilities, that is, the character’s hope was becoming stronger his actions were spanning an ever larger time-space and the drive for the story was getting powerful.” “The energy of the story dynamics accumulated by the Dragon King of the Jin River was expanded by characters like Li Shiming and was eventually conducted to Tang Seng. “The drive for Journey to the West originates from a very trivial event: the Dragon King of the Jin River hoped to challenge the fortune-teller and took corresponding actions. Therefore, at the dawn of the era of ecological civilization, to review “proto-ecological narrative” will help us to recall the ecological memories that have long been lost. The root cause of ancient Chinese’s denial of seas as the carrier of resources is that the seas were not fit for the development of agriculture which was fundamental for the building of a strong country. In addition, the book has the strong tendency to “value mountain over sea”. The phoenix narrative is one highlight of the book and deserves an in-depth study. On the whole, The Book of Mountains and Seas merely describes the geographical environment, but when it comes to the account of the phoenix paradise, it seems as if the narrator explicitly expresses his appreciation of nature’s beauty. The book should be read as the origin of modern ecological narrative, because ancient Chinese were knowledgeable about nature and had deep ecological insights, treating mountains and seas as the carrier of resources and knowing that everything had its specific appearance, and what is more, they also cherished the idea that resources were limited. Therefore, it is fair to say that The Book of Mountains and Seas is a “proto-ecological narrative”. The ecological consciousness of “self in Self” permeates the whole book, and its seemingly absurd stories reflect the interdependence and symbiosis of all things. With the geographical location of mountains and seas as longitude and the cardinal points as latitude, the whole book presents a spatial picture of animals, plants, minerals, and monsters, and organizes them into a relatively orderly resource system. Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-292) and index.The narrative strategies of Shan Hai Jing (or The Book of Mountains and Seas) show that they focused their attention only on objects that were useful to them and paid no attention to those whose usefulness was unknown to them.All seventy-six of those plates are reproduced here for the first time, and they provide a fine example of the Chinese engraver's art during the late Ming dynasty'-Back cover. The Guideways may have been illustrated from the start, but the earliest surviving illustrations are woodblock engravings from a rare 1597 edition. Today, it is regarded as the richest repository of ancient Chinese mythology and shamanistic wisdom.

The work was originally used as a sacred geography, as a guidebook for travelers, and as a book of omens. Richard Strassberg brings the Guideways to life for modern readers by weaving together translations from the work itself with information from other texts and recent archaeological finds to create a lavishly illustrated guide to the imaginative world of early China.' 'Unlike the bestiaries of the late medieval period in Europe, the Guideways was not interpreted allegorically the strange creatures described in it were regarded as actual entities found throughout the landscape.

The text also represents a wide range of beliefs held by the ancient Chinese. The Guideways through Mountains and Seas, compiled between the fourth and first centuries, B.C.E., contains descriptions of hundreds of fantastic denizens of mountains, rivers, islands, and seas, along with minerals, flora, and medicine. 'A Chinese Bestiary presents a fascinating pageant of mythical creatures from a unique and enduring cosmography written in ancient China. xxii, 313 pages : illustrations, maps 26 cm.Berkeley : University of California Press, 2018.

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