Kai Xu

This article examines the first seven chapters of Journey to the West as a philosophical allegory of how “nature is humanized”. It argues that the narrative arc of Sun Wukong – from the “Stone Monkey Born of Heaven” to the “Victorious Fighting Buddha” – symbolizes the passage from instinct to culture. The study employs textual–philosophical analysis, integrating Jung’s theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious, the yin–yang and Five Elements cosmology of the Commentaries on the Book of Changes, alongside the Confucian notion of ritual–mind–Heaven (li–xin–tian).The study identifies four dimensions of Wukong’s development: collective unconscious and awakening; symbolic order and spiritual construction; historical rationality and humanistic synthesis; and cosmological projection. The paper concludes that the narrative structure of the novel encodes a symbolic model of “becoming human”, thereby redefining Journey to the West not as religious allegory or folklore, but as a site of philosophical reflection, contributing to debates on human nature, culture, and the relationship between humanity and the cosmos. Submission: 20/8/2025 – Decision: 16/9/2025 - Revision: 30/9/2025 – Publication: 20/10/2025.

This study aims to investigate whether simple and convenient progressive relaxation training is effective in enhancing collegiate student athletes’ mental health and sports performance. An experimental group of 14 and a control group of 10 collegiate student athletes were recruited from among track and field athletes who were preparing for provincial competition. The experimental group was exposed to a PRT intervention in 30-min sessions conducted twice per week for a duration of one month. At baseline, the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Scale for Chinese were completed, while only the CSAI-2 was reassessed at one, two, and three weeks after initiation of the intervention. Additionally, within half a day after completing all one’s individual competition events, the CSAI-2 was again assessed in the two groups recalling their memory of their precompetition state anxiety. Then, the differences in the three dimensions of the CSAI-2 between the two groups at the five time points introduced above were compared. This study also explored whether PRT affected sports performance, defined by the athletes reaching their best records or not, by logistic regressive analysis. This study found significant between-group differences in the self-confidence dimension score at the second and third time points. Through logistic regression analysis, a positive effect of PRT was found for the enhancement of sports performance. In sum, PRT showed positive effects on precompetition state self-confidence and enhanced sports performance among collegiate student athletes.

Previous research has demonstrated that regular exercise modulates motor cortical plasticity and cognitive function, but the influence of short-term high-intensity interval training remains unclear. In the present study, the effect of short-term HIIT on neuroplasticity and executive function was assessed in 32 sedentary females. Half of the participants undertook 2 weeks of HIIT. Paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to measure motor cortical plasticity via short intracortical inhibition and intracortical facilitation. We further adapted the Stroop task using functional near-infrared spectroscopy to evaluate executive function in the participants. The results indicated that, compared with the control group, the HIIT group exhibited decreased ICF. In the Stroop task, the HIIT group displayed greater activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left orbitofrontal cortex even though no significant difference in task performance was observed. These findings indicate that short-term HIIT may modulate motor cortical plasticity and executive function at the neural level.