 Hello. Welcome to the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Suras. My name is Desmond Chan and I teach on various courses in Chinese culture and history, and also classical Chinese and a bit of modern Chinese language as well. Thanks for your interest in our department. As you know, we offer a wide range of courses on the languages and cultures of East Asia, and I will just give you a taste of one of these on East Asian culture today. The module is called Myths, Legends and Folkways of East Asia and is currently offered to undergraduate and postgraduate students. Now, as with many countries, regions of the world with long and rich traditions, myths are an important part of East Asian culture. Both as it was in the past, for centuries over a millennium in some cases, particular myths arose and evolved and spread, and also in a number of cases into the present, into modern East Asia. Now, you may know some examples of these myths and particular figures make them to mind or some stories that you may have seen on TV, in movies or on just wider popular culture. So maybe these will be some that I will introduce today. So in our module there, we take a particular approach, a thematic approach that covers three major themes in China, Japan, and Korean myths. And for each week, we have a focus on one of these themes and one of these countries. And each country area, the themes for that country are taught by a specialist, a scholar who works on that region, that tradition. We teach the China part for this course, but for all of these readings or these weeks, we read both primary texts, that is, writings that were created, or put down in the period of the past that we're exploring together. As well as modern scholarship, that is secondary sources or essays, articles, books written by modern scholars, helping us to understand those myths from the past. So the three themes are sacred, sacred geographies, animals in mythology, and ghosts, and the underworld. So for the theme of sacred geographies, we introduce and look at a range of key sites, and these include mountains. Firstly, and on the lower right picture on this slide is Taishan, which is arguably the most important sacred mountain in China, going back to early in the pre-imperial times. Among other things, it was associated with the underworld, but also various gods and deities that could be found and encountered there. These caves were often places that were seen to connect to other worlds as well, partly by virtue of going deep into the ground, and there were whole structures or projected structures of how these caves or caverns connected to kind of immortals, immortal lands of the Daoists. And after Buddhism comes to China, and there's a lot of interactions between Buddhism and Daoism, these are often sites of where Buddhist power was projected. For example, in the form of Buddhist carvings like in these caves and outside Hangzhou in the lower left. And Buddhist sculptures generally were created to establish merit or good karma for those who paid for them as a way of spreading the Buddhist teachings, the words of the Buddha. Other layers of sacred places in China include like immortals like in this Han Dynasty relief in the top here, the famous Queen Mother of the West, who was believed to reside in the West, that's why she's called that, and grants immortality either to those who came to meet her, or through the elixir of life. And that was a goal of Daoists from the beginning, that is to live as long as heaven and earth. And these immortals were places that are often found in worlds beyond our world, the human world. And sometimes beyond mountains, sometimes in the islands of the sea, sometimes in caves and caverns, or sometimes beyond springs or springs in mountains, for example. And just like in the movie Shang Chi, and you might recognize this creature from the, that recent Marvel Universe movie, and it is in fact based on a creature depicted here in the Qing Dynasty, but print from these like worlds beyond, or sacred worlds, sacred spaces. So for this unit, we need one of the most important texts, the Shan Hai Jing, which describes many wonderful places, including many mountains, and the creatures to be found therein. The second theme is animals in Chinese myths. And it's important to bear in mind, or to think through not just in case of China or East Asia, but other cultures and indeed not just in myth, but in our world today, what exactly is an animal? How is an animal different from a human being? And these are questions which we talk about from the perspective of evolution, from the perspective of science, from the perspective of whether we should eat meat and things like that. But in China, or in the East Asian tradition, the idea that all creatures or beings, indeed even inanimate objects, but what we might consider inanimate phenomena, like mountains or even storms or weather phenomena, constitute by chi, chi, vapor or energy or breath, the vital force that constitutes everything in the universe, and coalescing to various degrees of refinement or density to produce the myriad of beings, including humans, including animals. So the fact that or the understanding that different creatures, different phenomena are constituted by chi, also explains why in East Asian thought it was possible for one kind of being to transform into another. This idea of transformation between different creatures was very important in the East Asian tradition. And even for the idea of chi was fully developed in that sense, the possibility that humans, that human beings could share characteristics with animals was very important. And on the other hand, dynasty relief, and in the upper right here of the legendary couple, civilizational creators, who are part human, the upper bodies and the lower bodies are serpents, so they're sort of hybrid animals, humans. And this idea of hybridity was very important and feeds into the later idea of what was an animal, what was a chi, what was a creature that could transform between these categories. The famous creatures, of course, the dragons is one of the most potent, especially imperial symbols in Chinese myth and legend, and the nine tailed fox in the bottom right here. Foxes generally, they're a lure, as fox spirits, often turning into extremely beautiful women in chantrises, seroptrises from Faital. And that is a powerful myth that spread across the East Asia that continues through to the present. And for this unit for China we read about one of the most famous animals in Chinese history, perhaps or Chinese mythology that is monkey, the hero of the COG one of the four classics of literature. And the final theme is the afterlife or souls and the underworld bureaucracy in the case of China. And of course, what happens when we die is a very important theme in all of this. And in the case of China, we can see that there were early ideas, going back as far as we have records of about the deceased becoming ancestors that might have influence over their living descendants over the human world, the mortal world. And also beliefs that somehow it was possible to become to prolong life or to become immortal. So we mentioned the Taoist a short while ago in the Queen Mother of the West. But for example, from other archaeological evidence like this Jade burial suit, which is, is quite a few and be discovered from the handiness the obviously from the elite classes. And these are the remains the corpses of the dead covered in suits made up of hundreds of pieces of Jade, threaded together by gold often or silver and and thread and this the purity of the Jade was meant to preserve the body of course it didn't work and often stolen by tomb raiders but nonetheless there was that these beliefs from early China, but it was with Buddhism, the arrival of Buddhism in the, in the around the beginning of the common era in the hand dynasty. That's completely transformed Chinese ideas about the underworld this is partly of course because Buddhism believes in reincarnation and rebirth through many, many countless lifetimes, not just in human form. Not just in animal form but other deities and demons and different categories of creatures. And this was partly to do with the workings of karma of merit and demerits accumulated in the lifetime across lifetimes which would influence the rebirth of in the next lifetime picture in the lower right, sorry in the lower left, you see this, the dead coming to be judged by one of the kings of hell and be shown a karmic mirror so that shows what they've done in life will determine what their next rebirth will be. And is it is this kind of idea and mostly from Buddhism but there's other traditions and possibly in this newly envisaged underworld system that is not being judged by in various courts in the afterworld. That's really takes off and becomes the popular view of the afterlife in China, and to an extent in in Korea and Japan, and as well, although with differences. So, but it's, and this famous Moulien, I'm sorry, going to rescue his mother in the underworld this is a very famous story and in this popular imagination and demons coming to grab one to drag one grab and drag one into the underworld for punishment at the moment of death. And for this unit, we look at scrolls from the 19th century, which are very much at the show the mature development of these ideas about the underworld and visual form, and in the case of China. So those are the three main themes and just a few taster's ideas about how we think about them is key elements of myth and legend in the case of China. But as I said at the start, perhaps you know some of this already, where you have ideas about East Asian myth and indeed, it's not just the station now one could argue that some of these myths that originate and evolve in East Asia now spread across the world. And just to give a couple of examples. I mentioned in relation to the role of animals and myths the famous story of monkey from Journey to the West. And this was myth. We could call it a legend but it's sort of with many mythic elements that actually go back to the legend or the legend arise version of an actual historical figure. And who's in a Japanese picture on the, on the left here was actually a monk in the Tang Dynasty China, who went to India to seek Buddhist scriptures, which he brought back after almost 20 years and spent many years translating them into Chinese to spread Buddhism in China. And that was the colonel, the historical accounts at the core of what becomes journey to the West CLG, and the form the fully fledged form that we usually read it was from the 16th century from the late Ming dynasty, but it evolved from, you know, over about 1000 years of history to that point, and continues to today. So, you know the story of monkey, and you can see in this upper right, the Japanese 1978 TV version of the story which was actually on on Channel four in England in the 1980s. Monkey in the middle and then pixie on the right and who's a kind of fallen deity in the form of a pig and sandy on the left. Similarly, a fallen deity. His brothers, fellow students or disciples of them up the Tang Xuan Zhang or the fictionalized version of Tang Xuan Zhang trip attack it and go on there many many adventures and westwards to fetch scriptures just like the original historical figure had done. And this became this is story has been told, and we told many times, as you can see in Japan, in China, including in the communist period, it was one of the few or the major officially approved animated films in China, even in the Maoist period. And continues to be told in modern versions today, like in this kind of comedy one comedy version from 2013 and the lower right. Moving across East Asia we already said it is popular in Japan, but you may or may not know that some of the very, very popular representations of it may be found in Dragon Ball, that wonderful manga TV series that began the 1980s when the main character Gokul and was in fact, informed in parts by monkey and see his monkey tail in this early depiction of him, the boy version of Gokul. And this come as recent reality TV show from Korea new journey to the West has the characters it's been going on for multiple seasons, I haven't seen it myself but it's a great hits very popular. As characters dressed up as as contestants dressed up as characters from journey to the West, and their quest is to go and find golden balls. As you can see in the poster in this series poster, just like Gokul does in in Dragon Ball as well. These are two Japan and Japanese and Korean popular shows that respectively are derived in parts from journey to the West. And another myth, just in passing that you will no doubt have heard of is that of Mulan, which, again, if not, based on as historically a tested historical figure as in journey to the West, the legend indeed of a woman or a girl who serves as a man in the army. Instead of her father goes back to the medieval Chinese period and indeed the story itself is set in the northern way dynasty, one of the northern states of China, after the collapse of the hand dynasty around 200 CE that was controlled by non Chinese people. So you can see this depiction of that legendary figure of Mulan, and as we have poems from the medieval period, a number of poems describing that story the ballad of Mulan. And then the ones you'll know of course other two Disney versions one from 1998 this animated film very popular big success. And somewhat less successful maybe a lot less success or the 2020 movie version despite its star power and huge budget. It wasn't just because of COVID that it didn't do as well as it might have done both worldwide. So in China where it was criticized to an extent in part because of this character, these kind of enchantress kind of which character, who is an addition, some many feel that was perhaps unwanted or unnecessary and warranted. This is a great example of a myth, a legend that has been spun over centuries from medieval China to now audiences across the world. Thanks to Disney. So then, I hope you got a sense from this taster lecture of what we have to offer to our modules at so as to this one is on East Asian myths and as you can see, it's a big topic, a very rich topic. And that in a sense, you know, we were only scratching the surface of this huge topic as as that's what we is possible to do in a 10 week module, but we do offer great breadth into a very important topic these Asian culture, and also depth. So the breadth through the themes is range of themes, and from the lectures, and from the readings but you are able to go in depth in your own study of some of these myths through writing a short essay or a reaction paper on one of the readings that go along with one of these lectures, as well as writing a myth study, a topic of your own and, you know, we're in the just a couple of years that we've offered this course already is quite a new module. I've done so many great papers, and covering all kinds of topics, including some of the ones I mentioned like Fox spirit legends from traditional times to the presence to TV shows and movies. I have a student who's currently researching the mythology Chinese Chinese mythology of Shang Chi movie, the Marvel movie. He's a big fan of Dragon Ball, who's written a very good paper on the many influences of the journey to the West on Dragon Ball. So, as you can see then it's a great course. Lots of things going on lots of ideas lots of myths to think about and we really encourage students to write on something that and grab your attention and that you will enjoy. Thanks very much and hope to see you here in this course or otherwise. Thank you.