# Harvard Visual China Symposium: Art of Journeys - From White Ape to the Monkey King Wukong #### calendar\_today Date and Time **April 11, 2025** All day #### pin\_drop Location **HAA Lower Lecture Hall** The launch of the hit game Black Myth: Wukong in August 2024 has sparked renewed interest in the many historical sites that inspired its stunning visuals. In fact, the role that players assume in the game—an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural abilities—has many previous incarnations in the history of Chinese and East Asian art. The most well-known of these is the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, from Wu Cheng'en's monumental sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West. Yet Wu's Journey to the West was only one of the converging points that brought together visual and textual sources dating back to the Han dynasty. These sources include pictorial representations of the tales of the White Ape from the Sichuan region of southwest China, the journey of the famous peripatetic Buddhist monk Xuanzang (602–664 CE) as recorded in Datang xiyuji (大唐西域记), which served as the main prototype for narratives of westward journeys, visual depictions of traveling monks accompanied by a monkey in Buddhist cave temples of northwest China, and popular tales such as the Song-Dynasty Datang sanzang qujing shihua (大唐三藏取經詩話). This symposium will gather leading scholars and graduate students to discuss the latest developments in the study of Chinese visual culture, offering fresh insights into its global relevance. The symposium is organized by Harvard Visual China, a GSAS Student Organization. More information: See also:- [ HAA Events ](/event-type/general) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#) Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://haa.fas.harvard.edu/node/1616981/event-feed.ics) Copy link link