The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 2 (95 page)

16
. Yuan Hong:
(328–76), another Jin official and poet. See
Jinshu
,
j
92, in
Ershiwushi
2: 1321d–1322e.

17
. White snow: the reference here is to the whiteness of the moonlight and to a song or tune by such a name. The complete title is
Yangchun baixue
, a tune so lofty and rarefied that it was known only to a few persons. See Song Yu
, “Dui Chu Wang wen
,” in Xiao Tong
,
Wenxuan
2 vols. (Hong Kong, 1936; reprint 1974),
j
45, 2: 981.

18
. Icy strings:
bingxian
, refers to a lute (i.e.,
pipa
) brought back from the region of Shu (the modern Sichuan) by one Bai Xiuzhen
and presented to the Tang emperor, Xuanzong, in the Kaiyuan period (713–42). The instrument originated as an article of tribute from the territory of Sinkiang (modern, Xinjiang), the strings of which were said to be made from the silk of ice silkworms; hence the color and name.

19
. For some of the ideas underlying Wukong’s discourse here, see the
Zhouyi Cantongqi
, DZ 999, 20: 63–96, esp.
j
10 and 41; SCC 2: 329–35.

20
. Obscure: that is,
hui
, obscure, dark, but it is also the official name of the last day in the lunar month, when the moon has the least light.

21
. Stroke: in the writings of Jing Fang
(77–37 BCE) and Yu Fan
(164–233 CE), two early alchemical theorists, the stages of the lunar movement are correlated with the eight trigrams (
gua
) developed in the discourse of
Yijing
or
Classic of Change
. According to the standard interpretation of the tradition, the broken lines of the trigrams symbolize the yin, whereas the unbroken lines betoken the yang. Thus the
zhen
trigram, associated with the third day of the month and first quarter of the moon, is depicted by the symbol
, which has one unbroken or yang stroke. The
dui
trigram, associated with the eighth day, has the symbol
, in which the two unbroken
lines
would indicate the ascendency of the yang. For a chart of the complete correlation, see Liu Ts’un-yan, “Taoist Self-Cultivation in Ming Thought,” in
Self and Society in Ming Thought
, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York and London, 1970), pp. 302–03.