A couple of months ago I saw a translated copy of ‘journey to the west’, the chinese classic about monkey king, on the shelf in the library and picked it up on a whim. I had an idea about the character of monkey king or sun wukong because of other video games but had no idea that black myth was coming out soon. I read this recent translation by julia lovell. The specific translation I picked up was quite abridged compared to a word for word translation (about 350 pages compared to 2000). I really enjoyed it so I’ll share some things I learned with the newsheads here. I’m doing my best here to be accurate but I’m not a chinese speaker or reader so I encourage others to correct me.

Though the book was written about 500 years ago, the story of Journey to the West starts about 1500 years ago. A buddhist monk from the tang empire in China, xuanzang, went on a journey to the west to india to study buddhism, retrieve and translate buddhist writings, and generally be a diligent travelling scholar. He made a 15-20 year round trip, brought back a bunch of writings, and wrote a book called ‘Records of the Western Regions’ about his travels. His book RotWR covers all kinds of non-religious matters - geography, ethnography, local industry/agriculture, manner of government, etc. A little like Herotodus’ history without making a bunch of shit up. Anyway, xuanzang brought all this scholarly work back, the Tang emperor offered him high civil honours but he declined, deciding to stay in the monastery, translating texts and doing effort posts about buddhism.

Xuanzang was rightly lauded and his travels were remembered as folk tales over the next few hundred years. I get the impression that while Wu Cheng’en wrote down the ‘definitive copy’ of all the stories about Xuanzang, the stories had been floating around in the zeitgeist for the past thousand years. in that time, the figure of xuanzang grew larger than life and his stories became one of a traveling troupe of himself the monk and various monstrous companions on a path of redemption, monkey king among them, as well as a big river monster, a flying, gluttonous pig, and a disgraced failson who was turned into a horse.

There’s three main parts of the overall monkey king story - the first part is about monkey on earth doing shenanigans, getting in trouble with heaven, and then devouring/stealing all kinds of heavenly objects, effectively gaining him superpowers. The second part is about the monk xuanzang getting selected to go west by the tang emperor and the buddhist figure guanyin, and the third part is the majority, xuanzang getting together with monkey and the others and going on adventures across the land. There’s a short epilogue where they eventually all make it back with buddhist teachings and are rewarded with appropriate roles in the heavenly court. Most of the story is the journey, taking the form of short, episodic adventures in different places, most of which involve demons trying to eat one or more of the characters and them escaping through monkey’s wit and warrior wisdom.

I enjoyed the book on a few levels. First, it’s funny. There’s a ton of satire of bureaucracy of all sorts, in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld. Monkey is irreverent and brash and shits on many people, often literally. Second, it’s got endless fights and encounters with crazy monsters. It’s easy to see the influence of the book on shows like dragonball Z or avatar the last airbender. I can see why it would be a fun concept to turn into a game. A bit deeper than that, the group of companions collectively are an allegory for different human feelings. Xuanzang the monk is morally upright but rigidly so, and often a coward. Monkey is selfish and arrogant but also has a heart. The pig is lazy and loves treats, while the river monster is pretty chill and goes along to get along. Together they remind me of how the cast of star trek TNG collectively represent different aspects of human personality and experience, navigating challenges as an integrated whole that is not without conflict.

Anyway A++ would culturally enrich myself again