The one-hundred-chapter version of the Journey to the West of the Ming Dynasty is a product of the long-term evolution of the scripture-seeking stories. As a full length novel, it possesses an internal unity. This unity can be systematically examined across three layers: story, knowledge, and conception. On the story layer, it marginalizes the Tang Priest and establishes Sun Wukong as the core protagonist who runs through the entire narrative. On the knowledge layer, its text covers a remarkably broad range of subjects, but it also contains various types of factual errors. In particular, its explanations of Buddhist knowledge appear to be deliberately distorted. This deliberate distortion correlates closely with the “author’s” intent to dominate the entire book through a Daoist conception. However, this intent of Daoistization is manifested mainly in the composition of the chapter titles. As far as the textual narrative is concerned, the actual principles and justifications governing the actions of various characters are provided by a vast corpus of proverbs and idioms, which are introduced through formulaic expressions such as “the old saying goes,” “the saying goes,” and “as the common saying goes.” This defining feature, which permeates the entire text, represents the ultimate unity achieved by the one hundred-chapter version on the conception layer. It embodies the life ideal of the common people, thereby cementing the one-hundred-chapter version as a classic text of popular literature.

This article explores the entanglements between humans and things in the Journey to the West from the perspective of human-thing relationships, drawing on the novel’s descriptions of wuse (the sensuous appearances of things), such as treasures and daily utensils. The relationships between humans and treasures in the Journey to the West reflect the metaphysical thought and spiritual wandering of the late Ming intellectual circles toward an ideal world, while the relationships between humans and daily utensils point to the obsession of the late Ming commoners with real-world wealth. The varied human-thing relationships not only reflect the tension arising from the different late Ming social groups’ respective immersion in ideals and reality but also demonstrate the aspiration for the integration of elite culture and popular culture, ultimately pointing to the vigorous rise of townsfolk culture.

The narrative strategies employed in Journey to the West drama of the Qing Dynasty were shaped by three types of pre-texts. In a narrow sense, the one-hundred-chapter version of the Journey to the West served as the primary combination-aggregation pre-text. It not only provided dramatists with a reference framework for selecting and arranging events but also established the narrative norms for deity-and-demon stories. Moreover, its original text could be directly combined into scripts as entrance verses or character dialogues. Early scripts functioned as more direct combination pre-texts. Given its song-centered artistic nature, Qing-dynasty Journey to the West drama frequently borrowed and integrated previous song texts, and the arrangement of song suites had a direct influence on the narrative flow. In a broad sense, the public image of Journey to the West in the minds of the general public at the time—that is, the basic understanding of the novel’s import shaped by multimedia storytelling—also profoundly influenced the dramatists’ narrative strategies. Even literati authored Journey to the West drama had to cater to public expectations. Consequently, a distinct narrative trend emerged: framing the narrative as “a book of immortals,” thereby giving the story a manifest and discernible meaning. In essence, the narrative remained “a playful book.”

Although the studies of the Journey to the West 西游记 have yielded fruitful results in the 21st century, researchers have long confined their academic endeavors to the one hundred-chapter version. This has left traditional inquiries into authorship, textual recension, and themes locked in a repetitive impasse. To break this stalemate, this study advocates the “decentering of the one-hundred-chapter version,” that is, shifting the foundational focus of research from the novel back to the Journey to the West story itself. This breakthrough is achieved via three pathways: first, returning to the ontological artistic traditions of textual systems such as dramas, shuochang, and images through a transtextual perspective; second, breaking down disciplinary barriers to facilitate a transtextual study by drawing upon religious studies, folklore studies, and iconography; and third, reconstructing the historical space across which the Journey to the West story evolved and disseminated. In doing so, this study aims to unveil the multifaceted landscape that characterized the textual generation of this enduring classic.

In the digital age, video games are gradually replacing film and television as a dominant medium of mass culture, thereby playing an increasingly significant role in the global dissemination of culture. Through modern modes of expression, the video game Black Myth: Wukong brings traditional Chinese culture into the public spotlight, rapidly attracting widespread attention across social media, cultural industries, and market sectors, and generating notable economic and cultural impact. Literary resources, cultural symbols, and narrative styles drawn from different media are integrated into the platform of video games, giving rise to this large-scale transmedia production. Through its configuration of main and side questlines, cutscenes, and the Portraits system, the game emulates the literary features of the novel Journey to the West, including its chapter-based structure, alternation between prose and verse, the intervention of a storyteller’s voice, and multi strand narration, thereby endowing classical poetics with renewed contemporary relevance. Natural and cultural landscapes from the real world are creatively reconfigured within the game’s secondary world through the application of Chinese artistic concepts and techniques, enabling players to experience the depth of Chinese cultural heritage alongside a fantastical Eastern aesthetic. Moreover, shaped by creative contributions across multiple media, the story world generates within the video game platform a new heroic image characterized by collective consciousness and moral responsibility, thus challenging the individualism prevalent in the tide of globalization. Having already produced a phenomenal impact in terms of transmedia production and dissemination, Black Myth: Wukong offers a valuable model for knowledge production in the new era, the development of cultural industries, and the global dissemination of Chinese culture.

Dunhuang culture is an important part of the shared historical memory among the countries surrounding western China and those along the Silk Road. Strengthening the cross-cultural communication of Dunhuang culture meets the needs of the times by promoting exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations, demonstrating the distinctive features of Chinese civilization, and sharing China’s experience in the protection of cultural relics. This work urgently requires theoretical breakthroughs and innovative practice in areas such as intersubjective communication, zhong-media communication, and circle based communication. Intersubjective communication respects the diversity of civilizations, zhong-media communication emphasizes transcending traditional media, and circle-based communication focuses on the fluctuating shifts between the center and the periphery. These three communication approaches are independent yet interconnected, and are organically unified in bringing fine traditional Chinese culture to the world. Strengthening coordination among communication subjects, prioritizing the internet, advancing high-quality cultural products alongside improving market mechanisms, and using targeting area and country audience research as a breakthrough point can enhance the influence, communicative capacity, appeal, and permeative influence of Dunhuang culture’s cross-cultural communication.