Wu Cheng'en (about 1500- 1582) was born in He Xia, Shanyang County, Huai 'an Prefecture, South Zhili (now Huai 'an, Jiangsu Province), and his ancestral home is Anton. Ming dynasty writers.
Since childhood, Wu Cheng'en has been reading extensively in Minhui, especially fond of fairy tales. Good at painting and calligraphy, versatile. Modern scholars generally believe that Wu Cheng'en is the last finisher of The Journey to the West, one of China's four classical masterpieces.
The main influence of Wu Cheng'en
Wu Cheng'en's main achievement is the completion of the The Journey to the West. Due to the frustration of officialdom and the hardships of life, Wu Cheng'en deepened his understanding of the feudal imperial examination system and the dark social reality, so he used strange novels to express his inner dissatisfaction and resentment. Wu Cheng'en said to himself, "Although my title is intellectual monster, I don't know about ghosts, but I actually remember the variation of human beings, and I have a lesson."
The Journey to the West is a wonderful book that reflects the social reality of the Ming Dynasty through artistic processing with the historical event of "Tang Priest's Learning from the Scriptures" as the background. The book mainly describes the story of the Monkey King who made a scene in the Heavenly Palace after his birth and met Tang Priest, Pig Bajie, Friar Sand and Bai. He went west to learn from the scriptures, went through difficulties and obstacles, and turned the devil down. After eighty-one difficulties, he finally arrived in the Western Heaven to see the Tathagata, and finally the Five Saints died.
Reference to the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia-Wu Cheng'en