Tower of Myriad Mirrors: A Supplement to Journey to the West (Michigan Classics in Chinese Studies) (36 page)

As Xu Jiang has well argued, Tung T'o's writing of the novel in 1640 had much to do with his sense of bitterness and disappointment over his failure of passing the Provincial Examination (
hsiang-shih
) one year earlier--the author's satirical treatment of Civil Service Examination in
Chapter 4
that begins the depiction of the Tower of Myriad Mirrors clearly supports this observation. Apart from this event in his life, we simply could not believe that Tung T'o's couplet and note, given the way he has phrased them, can be taken, as Gao Hongjun and his followers have done, to mean that
Journey to the West
(
) refers to
A Supplement to Journey to the West
(
) by his father, and that he himself has only written or “supplemented” one episode or chapter to his father's work.

We are happy to report that Zhao Hongjuan has completed an article in which she brings her expertise on late Ming and early Ch'ing literature to bear on Tung T'o's authorship, reviews all theories, arguments, and evidence, and presents what we believe will be the decisive conclusion to the controversy. Her article is expected to appear in print in a scholarly journal soon.

We used the Wade-Giles system of romanization for Chinese names and terms in our 1978 translation because it was standard practice at the time. For practical reasons, we have not departed from Wade-Giles in subsequent editions, including this ebook.

Shuen-fu Lin

Larry J. Schulz

June 2012