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The 16th century novel Journey to the West performed by Yangzhou Pinghua - a form of storytelling in the Yangzhou dialect – is being regularly released on the Himalayan, an audio sharing platform in China and to date has been well-received by thousands of fans.
Journey to the West is a Chinese novel about the pilgrimage of a Tang Monk and his three disciples, the Monkey King, the pig monk Zhu Bajie and the former river monster, Sha Wujing, to obtain Buddhist sutras. The work is regarded as one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature.
"I want to revive the Journey to the West in Yangzhou Pinghua version," said Wu Aijun, the storyteller. It will take Wu almost three years to finish the audio recording series as planned.
Wu said it is estimated that overall 500 episodes will need to be recorded for the 25 chapter-long edition in the Yangzhou Pinghua version. Wu said, the updated episodes will be available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Wu began his contact with Yangzhou Pinghua when he was a young child and participated in a Chinese folk musical club when he was a middle school student, where he learned from Gao Zaihua, a successor of traditional Yangzhou Pinghua.
Wu has been broadcasting the Journey to the West on the internet since 2017.
In addition to the traditional version, Wu also introduced traditional folk-customs to make it full of Yangzhou regional characteristics.
Wu added that Pinghua storytellers should not only preserve the primary essence of the novels, but also inject modern popular elements into it.
