Monkey: A Journey to the West
“Monkey: A
Journey to the west” is one of those stories that is a lot older than the
actual publishing. When Wu Cheng’en wrote and published the story in the 16th
century it was already an old folk legend that had probably mutated a lot over
the years and there are likely many parallel stories over the theme. I have
already encountered a few such stories (old Chinese legends), so this is not so
much a story of the 16th century as a 16th century window
into a traditional story.
Anyway, the
story of the Monkey king is famous, also in the west. I remember watching
cartoons on television in my childhood about the adventures of the Monkey king
and although these shows are very faint in my memory I do recognize the tales
in the book. The Monkey king Sun Wukong is a naughty and disrespectful fellow
with immense powers. He jumps around on clouds and get into all sorts of
trouble and that is great television for children.
As a book
it is a little different. It is both a product of a different time and a
different culture and it shows. From a modern, western perspective it is a
story full of holes, strange jumps and awkward resolutions. You can have a
carefully built up scene that gets resolved in two lines or hazards appearing
out of nowhere. Responses of characters and those they meet are often weird,
even bizarre and there is a repetitive pattern to the story that makes me
grateful that what I read was a much reduced version compared to the original
100 chapter story.
Back in the
seventh century the Buddhist monk and scholar Xuanzang went on a mission from Tang
dynasty China to India to find and bring back holy Buddhist scriptures. This is
a real historic event. In the folk legend however Xuanzang was accompanied by a
number of disciples whose function was to keep the monk out of trouble. The
Monkey was the foremost one of these (The others were Zhu the Pig and Sha the
Monk) and in the legend he is far more central than the monk. In fact, he is a
far more developed character than the rather one-dimensional Xuanzang,
The book
can be divided into three segments.
The first
and in my opinion the best one is the origin of the Monkey King. How he was
created and lived in a valley lording it over his fellow monkeys and how he
travelled the world to study to become immortal. Having achieved that status
the next logical step was to challenge the celestial world. No matter what the
heavenly powers did they could best him and all their attempts at sidetracking
Monkey resulted in even worse trouble. When he ends up sabotaging the Jade
Queen’s peach party they have had enough and trap Monkey under a mountain for
500 years. It is from this prison he is released in return for serving as a
protector for Xuanzang.
And does he
need a protector. For a master and important person he is incredibly helpless.
Constantly he walks into trouble, and mostly deadly ones, typically involving a
demon wanting to eat him. And every time Monkey will have to save him. About
half the time Monkey manages on his own, no thanks to the other disciples, but
just as often Monkey has to return to the celestial palace for some assistance.
You would think the master is grateful, but, nah, his principles are more
important and often Monkey is dismissed for some offense or another. The first
few challenges are interesting enough but the pattern is always the same and I am
actually grateful that some of the challenges can be resolved in less than ten
lines. It gets really boring.
Finally,
however, Xuanzang and company arrive in India, visit Buddha and get some
scriptures to bring home. Everybody are happy, especially the monk who is flown
back in eight days whereas the voyage out took 14 years. There is a lot of
religious hokus pokus about how important this mission was and the end.
For a
modern reader this is a story that needs some reworking and it probably has had
that over the years. In its current form it is interesting, but rarely
engaging. Fortunately, my copy had a lot of beautiful Chinese prints and that went
a long way to stay my interest. Probably not a book I would read again, but not
a book I regret reading.
