Journey to the West was written by Wu Ch’eng-en (1500?–1582), a scholar-official and is one of the renowned classical Chinese novels about an allegorical rendition of the journey, mingled with Chinese fables, fairy tales, legends, superstitions, popular beliefs, monster stories, as well as, whatever the author could find in the Taoist and Buddhist religions. It was based on a true story of a famous Chinese monk, Xuan Zang (602–664). After years of trials and tribulations, he traveled on foot to what is today India, the birthplace of Buddhism, to seek for the Sutra, the Buddhist holy book. When he returned to China he started to translate the sutras into Chinese, thus making a great contribution to the development of Buddhism in China.
Monkey King is a rebellious extraordinary being, born out of a rock, fertilized by the grace of heaven. Being extremely smart and capable, he learned all the magic tricks and gong fu from a master Taoist. He was able to transform himself into seventy-two different images such as a tree, a bird, a beast of prey, or a bug as small as a mosquito, so he could sneak into an enemy’s belly to fight him inside out. Using clouds as a vehicle he could travel 180,000 miles in a single somersault. His favorite weapon in his later feats was a huge iron bar that supposedly served as a ballast for the seas and could expand or shrink at its owner’s command.
He claimed to be the king, in defiance of the only authority over heaven, the seas, the earth and the subterranean world—Yu Huang Da Di, or the Great Emperor of Jade in Chinese. This act of high treason, coupled with complaints from the masters of the four seas and hell, invited the relentless scourge of the heavenly army.
After many showdowns, the emperor had to offer the monkey an official title to appease him. Enraged he revolted, fighting all his way back to earth to resume his own claim as a king after learning that the position he held was nothing but a stable keeper. Eventually, the heavenly army subdued him, only after many a battle, with the help of all the god warriors. However, having a bronze head and iron shoulders, all methods of execution failed and the monkey dulled many a sword inflicted upon him. As a last resort, the emperor commanded that he be burned in the furnace where his Taoist minister Tai Shan Lao Jun refines his pills of immortality. Instead of killing him, the fire and smoke added to the monkey a pair of fiery golden crystal eyes that can see through where people normally can not. He fought his way down again. Finally, under Buddha’s help, the monkey was suppressed under a great mountain know as the Mount of Five Fingers and he could not move. Only 500 years later, there came his rescuer, the Tang monk, Xuan Zang, whom we mentioned at the beginning of the story.
The Monkey King becomes the disciple of the monk and escorts him with Buddha’s arrangements to insure that he could make it to the West to get the sutras, along with two other disciples they later came across, (actually also arranged by Buddha). One is the humorous and not uncourageous pig, transgressed from a heavenly general for his crime of assaulting a fairy, and the other a used-to be sea monster. There began the stormy journey west, which was an action packed adventure that brought into full play the forcefulness, power and vigor of the monk’s disciples, the Monkey King in particular.
The story of Journey to the West is divided into three parts: 1) An early history of the Monk’s spirit 2) A pseudo-historical account of Tripitaka’s family and life before his trip to find the sutras in the Western Heaven 3) The main story, consisting of eighty-one dangers and calamities encountered by Tripitaka and his three animal spirit disciples-Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy. Many critics agree that the protagonist embodies what the author tried to convey to his readers: a rebellious spirit against the then untouchable feudal rulers.
Part 1 │Part 2