The launch of the hit game, “Black Myth: Wukong,” in August 2024 has sparked renewed interests in the many historical sites that inspired its stunning visuals. In fact, the role that players take on in the game—an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural abilities—also has many previous incarnations in the history of Chinese and East Asian art at large. The most well-known is perhaps the Monkey King Sun Wukong, from Wu Chengen’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. Harvard Visual China’s 2025 Graduate Symposium presents two panels on the topic of Art of Journeys—From Ape Tales to the Monkey King Wukong.

For a complete program and more information, visit https://www.harvardvisualchina.com/hvc-2025-symposium-info-reg.