Is A Supplement to the Journey to the West from the 17th century the oldest Chinese work of literature involving time travel?

Question

A Supplement to the Journey to the West is a Chinese novel from around 1640 that was written as a type of addendum to the great classic novel Journey to the West. Journey to the West is set during the Tang dynasty (618 - 907), since it involves a character, Xuanzang that lived during that period. In A Supplement to the Journey to the West, one of the characters, Sun Wukong aka Monkey

leaps through and travels hundreds of years forward in time to the Song Dynasty,

which officially lasted from 960 until 1279, and later returns to the Tang dynasty (618 to 907 AD).

In the West (i.e. Europe, not the "West" from the novel's title), the concept of time travel was popularised by H. G. Wells' story The Time Machine, published in 1895, i.e. three and a half centuries after A Supplement to the Journey to the West. The Wikipedia article on time travel mentions older examples from other literatures, e.g. from the Mahabharata (India) and from 8th-century Japanese literature. Is A Supplement to the Journey to the West the oldest Chinese example? If not, what is the oldest one?

Answer 1

According to this Chinese article, Liu Yiqing (403—444) wrote a story that involves time travel in his Hidden and Visible Realms (a collection of zhiguai ("accounts of anomalies")). The plot is as follows:

Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao were two herbalists. One day, they went up the mountain together to gather herbs, but got lost. Suddenly, they noticed several balls of sesame rice floating down from upstream. They followed the stream and soon came upon two women. Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao settled there, married the women, and lived happily for a year or two. As they never forgot their parents back home, they found an opportunity to return to their village, planning to bring their parents to live with them. However, upon returning to their hometown, Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao were shocked to find they couldn’t recognize the familiar paths. They inquired everywhere, but couldn't find any trace of their parents. Finally, they managed to find their ancestral home, only to discover it was deserted. Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao finally realized that while only a few years had passed in the mountains, several decades had elapsed in the outside world. Their parents and old friends were long gone.

According to Wikipedia (Chinese version), Liu's stories are among the earliest Chinese short stories. And I can't find another literary work mentioned in that Wikipedia article that involves time travel and is earlier than Liu's. Liu lives in a dynasty earlier than the Tang Dynasty (618-907). So probably Liu's story is the earliest Chinese literary work about time travel.

Answer 2

Well, in Chuanqi (Legend), a form of literature popular in Tang Dynasty, there were stories very similar to Rip Van Winkle. The most famous one would be 《枕中记》 (The World Inside A Pillow). Besides, in Chinese folk lore, relativity of the time—— that time goes much slower up in the heaven than it does on earth——has been an recurring theme.