Wu Cheng'en is read about 374 times a day, in 50 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 22 September 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He's credited with writing Journey to the West, the sprawling 16th-century epic about a monk and his monkey-demon companion that became one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature.
Also in Deutsch
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In their own words 2
, I was very fond of strange stories when I was a child. In my village-school days, I used to buy stealthily the popular novels and historical recitals.
A monkey's transformed body weds the human mind. Mind is a monkey - this, the truth profound.
About this person
Wu Cheng'en was a Ming dynasty novelist, poet, and politician born around 1500. He held the courtesy name Ruzhong and moved between literary and official circles during a period when China's vernacular fiction was gaining literary respect. Though authorship debates linger, he's widely considered the mind behind Journey to the West, the fantastical pilgrimage tale that blended Buddhist allegory, folklore, and satire into a work that would shape Chinese storytelling for centuries. He died sometime between 1580 and 1582, leaving behind a novel that outlasted the dynasty itself.
Writers from China 6
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