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Wu Faxian (1915 - 2004) was a military and political leader of the People's Republic of China. In 1930 he became a soldier of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, two years later he joined the Communist Party of China. He participated in five Counter-Encirclement Campaigns, the Long March, the Battle of Pingxingguan, the Liaoshen Campaign and the Pingjin Campaign.<br/><br/>

In 1955 he was granted the military rank of Lieutenant General. Wu was a subordinate of Lin Biao. In 1965 he became the commander of the People's Liberation Army Air Force. In 1981 he was declared guilty as a member of the Lin Biao group and punished with a sentence of 17 years.
Xuanzang ( Wade–Giles: Hsüan-tsang, c. 602 – 664) was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang period. Born in Henan province of China in 602 or 603, from boyhood he took to reading sacred books, including the Chinese Classics and the writings of the ancient sages. While residing in the city of Luoyang, Xuanzang entered Buddhist monkhood at the age of thirteen.<br/><br/>

Due to the political and social unrest caused by the fall of the Sui dynasty, he went to Chengdu in Sichuan, where he was ordained at the age of twenty. From Xingdu, he travelled throughout China in search of sacred books of Buddhism. At length, he came to Chang'an, then under the peaceful rule of Emperor Taizong of Tang. Here Xuanzang developed the desire to visit India. He knew about Faxian's visit to India and, like him, was concerned about the incomplete and misinterpreted nature of the Buddhist scriptures that reached China. <br/><br/>

He became celebrated for his seventeen year overland journey to India, which is recorded in detail in his autobiography and a biography, and which provided the inspiration for the epic novel Journey to the West.
Xuanzang ( Wade–Giles: Hsüan-tsang, c. 602 – 664) was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang period. Born in Henan province of China in 602 or 603, from boyhood he took to reading sacred books, including the Chinese Classics and the writings of the ancient sages. While residing in the city of Luoyang, Xuanzang entered Buddhist monkhood at the age of thirteen.<br/><br/>

Due to the political and social unrest caused by the fall of the Sui dynasty, he went to Chengdu in Sichuan, where he was ordained at the age of twenty. From Xingdu, he travelled throughout China in search of sacred books of Buddhism. At length, he came to Chang'an, then under the peaceful rule of Emperor Taizong of Tang. Here Xuanzang developed the desire to visit India. He knew about Faxian's visit to India and, like him, was concerned about the incomplete and misinterpreted nature of the Buddhist scriptures that reached China. <br/><br/>

He became celebrated for his seventeen year overland journey to India, which is recorded in detail in his autobiography and a biography, and which provided the inspiration for the epic novel Journey to the West.
Faxian (traditional Chinese: 法顯; simplified Chinese: 法显; pinyin: Fǎxiǎn; also romanized as Fa-Hien, Fa-hsien, Fa Xian) (337 – c. 422 CE) was a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled by foot all the way from China to India, visiting many sacred Buddhist sites in what are now Xinjiang, China, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and between 399 and 412 to acquire Buddhist scriptures.<br/><br/>

His journey is described in his important travelogue, 'A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Xian of his Travels in India and Ceylon in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline'.<br/><br/>

On Faxian's way back to China, after a two-year stay in Ceylon, a violent storm drove his ship onto an island that was probably Java. After five months there, Faxian took another ship for southern China but, again, it was blown off course and they ended up landed at Laoshan in what is now the Shandong peninsula in northern China, 30 km east of the city of Qingdao. He spent the rest of his life translating and editing the scriptures he had collected.