by mesmewriter

Banished to the human world for slighting the laws of heaven, a Buddha disciple reincarnates as a monk and embarks on a quest for sacred scriptures to atone for his sins. With a motley crew of former gods—a monkey, a man pig, and a river ogre—he must fight demons and evil spirits and overcome trials to fulfill his mission and return to his celestial home.

That is the premise of Journey to the West, a 16th century novel by Wu Chung'en based on the historical journey to India of Jintu Temple monk Xuanzang and written in the larger-than-life style of shenmo fictional reality.

What is shenmo?

Gods and demons fiction or shenmo xiaoshuo, as coined in the early 20th century by writer and literary historian Lu Xun, literally means fiction of gods and demons.

Shenmo is a fantasy sub-genre melding realistic human themes with fantastical fiction where men and immortals mingle freely. In a narrative style that drifts between social commentary and supernatural fantasy, shenmo re-imagines history with a combination of action, humor, and spiritual lessons framed by traditional Chinese legends and folk religion.

The jubilant casualness with which writers treat the embellishment of historical events with Chinese mythology is one of shenmo's curious charms.

Shenmo's distinctive traits

Through characterization, adventures, settings, and allegories, shenmo elevates fantastic motivation to nonhuman level with its peculiar attributes:

1. Actuality of immortals

Shenmo's unapologetic alteration of the human world compels readers to accept its unique fictional proposition of a contemporary society co-inhabited by Chinese divinities, immortals, and human heroes.

The default reality is that supernatural beings are persons by nature, whether they take recognizable physical forms or not.

2. Surreal setting

With its knack for crafting human settings with not-too-human props, shenmo offers readers a world where reality is stretched beyond recognizable generic boundaries and traditional limitations are supplanted by the marvelous confines of Chinese mythology.

Paranormal occurrences like gods wielding magical powers are viewed like a thunderstorm—frightening, stunning, and awe-inspiring all at once but an accepted trait of nature nonetheless. This suspension of disbelief bridges the gap between the mundane and magical.

3. Human-centered spiritual themes

Shenmo's overarching theme of "triumph of the human spirit" postulates that whatever trials or tragedies the protagonists may face, they will not only endure but also prevail.

The universality of its emotional message digs deeper than the plot to bring to light common human concerns like obsessions, struggle and victory, failure and redemption, and religion through the prism of social parodies and supernatural experiences.

4. Character regeneration

Shenmo has a propensity to regenerate characters. What drives writers is the desire to create new myths using historical characters, converting ancient heroes and villains to contemporary characters to fit new stories, settings, and time representations.

By redeveloping characters and keeping their nature, storytellers ride on the fantastic tradition to make them resonate well with the audience. Readers may not recall the details of the plot, but they will most likely remember the characters.

5. Mythic structure

Timeless stories passed down for centuries are the roots of this fantasy sub-genre's existence. Creators build new plots in the thread of ancient tales, retelling them in a manner that makes the audience see familiar things in a new story.

In shenmo's formulaic new myth structure as exemplified in Journey to the West, the hero goes through events that echo famous legends, realizes his true nature, confronts the challenges to achieve his goal, and gets transformed by his experience to become a better, more heroic person.

The rise and fall and resurgence of shenmo

Shenmo rose to popularity in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) as fiction written in vernacular Chinese, tracing its roots back to traditional folk tales and legends. The fusion with Chinese mythology, folk religion, Taoist, and Buddhist philosophies enriched the stories with supernatural underpinnings and spiritual lessons, making them popular even among Ming intellectuals.

Journey to the West and Investiture of the gods are considered as the quintessential novels of the sub-genre.

During the early Qing Dynasty, shenmo evolved into fantasy satire grappling with human absurdities as a form of social commentary.

In New Journey to the West, a lampoon written by Lenxue, the four major characters of Journey to the West, travel to modern Shanghai, play games of mahjong, party with prostitutes, and get hooked on drugs.

The upsurge of Chinese nationalist orthodoxy triggered by the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement (1915-1921) denigrated fantasy as superstitious works of feudal culture that hindered modernization and scientific advancement. Writers vilified stories of gods and demons and shifted from traditional Chinese literature to European-inspired realism.

From a genre pronounced dead by Maoist literary history, gods and demons crawled back to Chinese popular culture at the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Shenmo permeated radio, television, film, and literature with fantastic elements and engendered cross-cultural storytelling.

The popular manga and anime series Dragon Ball drew inspiration from Journey to the West. It tells about the adventures of warrior Son Goku in his search for the Dragon Balls, seven magical orbs that can grant a wish.

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Dream Hunters is a novella with Japanese characters based on Pu Songling's Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. In the story, a fox falls in love with a monk and offers her life to protect him from a rich occultist who intends to trap the monk in a dream until he dies.

Why shenmo works for a global audience

Shenmo's universal themes and strong sense of spiritual myth elicit familiarity, making people in all walks of life feel that in one way or another, they have experienced the message. That strange dose of induced déjà vu evokes emotional connection to the story.

What is understated here is that shenmo presumes that humans are psychologically predisposed to believe in gods and the afterlife. It fosters an evolutionary religious belief founded in human cultures and thought patterns.

The stories tend to be affirmations of what is considered a basic supposition of the human mind—driven by the allure of immortality. Like a psychological sandbox, it makes narrative a ploy to rehearse divine experiences without real consequences.

At its purest, shenmo is an abridged form of mimicry—mimicry of man's desired state of reality: to be one with the Divine.

And that is irresistible.

On Wattpad, Infinit: The Devil's Dagger, a novella series by Gil De Palma (mesmewriter)combines elements of shenmo and ancient myths from different cultures with its Biblical and historical fiction.

Synopsis:

Infinit: The Devil's Dagger is about an American police detective who discovers that the bogeyman she is tracking down is Adam and Eve's undying firstborn, Cain. She must stop Cain, but she has fallen madly in love with him.

In one episode, the goddess Circe transforms Detective Grimmy Reaper into a donkey. Her friend, Ming, a huli jing (nine-tailed fox spirit) who takes the form of a beautiful Chinese girl comes to her rescue.

Here's an excerpt:

"Grimmy, I love your donkey makeover."

"Where the hell have you been?" Grimmy says. "Your tardiness made me stray into Circe's mansion."

"For someone who needs rescuing, you complain too much," Ming says.

Circe emerges from the shadows of the carved walls of the Hall of Private Audience behind her dais and stares down at them. "You're not welcome here, fox princess."

"Pardon me for trespassing, my lady," Ming says, turning to Circe's direction with a polite bow. "I'm here to take my friend home."

"By all means," Circe says in a soothing voice that carries a veiled threat. She sits on her throne. "But first, let me feed my cats."

The shadows on the walls around them shift and transform into shadows of woodland in the zone between high and low tide. The wind blows the rotten egg odor of the muddy wet soil of a tropical mangrove forest all over the room.

And out of the water, huge cat shadows surface, every shadow crying out for attention with a paralyzing roar that Grimmy and Ming feel underneath their guts.

The cat shadows step into the hall, and as soon as they set foot on the floor, they turn into tigers with orange fur and black stripes and razor sharp teeth built for tearing raw flesh from the bone.

Time slows down as thirteen tigers stride into the hall from all directions, gaping at the donkey and the girl with their bulging grey-yellow eyes. Breath of meat and blood and the reek of urine assail Grimmy and Ming as the beasts pad around them from about fifteen feet.

Circe says nothing, staring at her cats without emotion.

"This is not fair," Grimmy says, "I'm a donkey and you're a fox, and we're surrounded by hungry tigers."

"And only a few of them, too," Ming says. "Let's try not to harm them. They used to be human. Just donkey-brained to eat Circe's food."

"That information would have been useful to me an hour ago," Grimmy sighs.

"Missed it in high school literature?" Ming says. "Anyway, tell me how to cook Filipino chicken adobo in coconut milk."

"Shut up," Grimmy says. "That's my secret recipe."

The tigers growl, swopping their tails from side to side like a whip, muscles rippling as they move closer to the prey.

"Grimmy, do you want to live or not?"

Inspirations:

Setting

Source

Characters

Source

Source

Source