The Yongle Encyclopedia Gives Birth to The Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons

(1) Emperor Zhu Di says that the Son of Heaven must plan for the great affairs of the realm. The Yongle Encyclopedia: 22,877 volumes, plus 60 volumes of preface and contents, for a total of 22,937 volumes, bound in 11,095 books and containing approximately 370 million characters. It includes seven to eight thousand works dating from the pre-Qin era to the early Ming, covering every subject, from the classics, histories, philosophical texts, and collected literature to local gazetteers, operas, medical books, crafts, and miscellaneous writings. It is the most comprehensive encyclopedia in the world, past and present, and represents 8,000 years of China's finest traditional culture.

(2) Yet Yang Shen alone could read and interpret the encyclopedia from cover to cover. The management of the Yongle Encyclopedia represented the ultimate in ancient control over books. Locked deep inside the forbidden palace, it was practically an imperial possession. As a result, almost no one could read the entire work, and even emperors only browsed it from time to time. Grand as the Yongle Encyclopedia was, its original edition vanished, and its copy was scattered. Yang Shen was hailed as the Ming dynasty's foremost widely read scholar. He served as a compiler at the Wenyuan Pavilion for 13 years and lectured at court to two emperors, Wuzong and Jiajing. He alone received the emperor's verbal permission to enter the Wen Tower and read the encyclopedia, and even took the Yongle Encyclopedia home with him. Chen Wenzhu wrote in the preface to his Taishi Sheng'an Collection: “Youxiu was born with an extraordinary gift. He could recite anything after a single glance. In the Xinhai year of Zhengde, he placed first in the palace examination. The Duke of Wenzhong oversaw the imperial writings, and all the treasures kept in the Bright Hall and stone chambers, the golden chests and jade tablets, were made available for him to examine.”

(3) The Yongle Encyclopedia and the Fuxi Eight Trigrams of Tianshui from 8,000 years ago, through to the Diagram of the Earlier Heaven

Jian Shaofang, Chronicle of Yang Shen of Sheng'an: “When the gentleman served in the Hanlin Academy, every secret work in the pavilion passed before his eyes. The Yongle Encyclopedia was vast, and few people of the time had the chance to see it all. Whenever he was free from his duties, he would take out volumes to read each day and copy down many passages. Later writings in Yunnan drew on this book for three or four parts out of ten.”