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Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en

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The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 1

Translated and Edited by Anthony C. Yu

576 pages | 1 halftone, 3 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 2012

Asian Studies: East Asia

Literature and Literary Criticism: Asian Languages

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The Journey to the West: Volume I

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Summary and Study Guide

The Journey to the West: Volume I (1983) , translated and edited by Anthony C. Yu, contains the first 25 chapters of a 100-chapter hero’s epic , an allegory designed to impart knowledge on how to behave and what values to extol. Originally published in the late 16th century during the late Ming Dynasty, this epic is “loosely based on the famous pilgrimage of Xuanzang…the monk who went from China to India in quest of Buddhist scriptures” (1). Xuanzang lived from approximately 596 to the year 664. This journey was part of a movement of pilgrimages to the west for universal truth imparted by Buddha. There are two original components to the text, one attributed to the author Yang Zhihe, the other attributed to the compiler Zhu Dingchen.  

For an abridged translation of Wu Cheng'en's full work, please refer to the study guide for Monkey: A Folk Novel of China (1942), translated by Arthur Waley.

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Shortly after the formation of the universe, a monkey is born from an immortal stone, possessing the traits of both the Yin and Yang. He becomes a king of other monkeys , and then trains in the Way, a Daoist discipline which earns him the ability to travel great distances with ease and to transform himself. Unfortunately, he angers his master and is cast out, at which point his selfishness and greed take hold of him. He develops an inferiority complex that leads to his offending Heaven. To get him under control, the ruler of Heaven—the Jade Emperor—offers him a fake title and gifts. When the monkey offends Heaven again, he flees to Earth, where a Heavenly army pursues him. 

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Wukong defies this army, until the Emperor’s nephew Erlang and the highest sage, Laozi, work together to trap him. The Jade Emperor sentences Wukong to death. Wukong is captured by the Buddha, Tathāgata , and imprisoned by five mountains on the promise that he can one day redeem himself. Guanyin and Hui’an leave to find the pilgrim that Tathāgata calls for to quest for knowledge, and Guanyin promises three monsters—and Wukong—opportunities for redemption. For Wukong, he will have to serve the pilgrim. The pilgrim, Xuanzang, grows up an orphan named and raised by a monk. He learns the Way, and when he’s 18, he finds out who his parents were and how they were wronged by bandits. He avenges his parents, and after his mother’s suicide, Xuanzang returns to the monastic lifestyle.

Emperor Tang Taizong is supposed to save the Dragon King from execution after the Dragon King ruins a fortune teller, but he fails because the executioner and judge, Wei, kills the Dragon King while dreaming. Taizong dies of sadness, and in the Underworld, promises to send food and hold a mass for the trapped souls so they can be reborn—he’s then sent back to the world of the living because he still has another 20 years to live. Taizong makes good on his promises.

At a mass sanctioned by Taizong and led by Xuanzang, Guanyin shows up and announces the quest to the west; Xuanzang volunteers. Xuanzang, also called Tripitaka, is helped along his journey and in return, saves a man’s father’s spirit. The man then agrees to guide him; when they are on a mountain, they hear Wukong cry out for his master. Tripitaka frees Wukong; they’re attacked, and Wukong kills the bandits attacking them. Tripitaka chides him, and Wukong flees. Guanyin helps Tripitaka control Wukong, who now goes by Pilgrim. Later, they gain control of the dragon that Guanyin promised redemption to when she turns it into a horse. Along their journey, Pilgrim is becoming a better soul, but he still has lessons to learn, such as how to curb his pride and vanity—a lesson he must learn when the abbot at the monastery of Guanyin tries to steal Tripitaka’s holy cassock because Pilgrim wanted to show it off.

Pilgrim and Guanyin work together to subdue a bear monster and regain the heavenly cassock for Tripitaka; Guanyin reminds Pilgrim to be good and not lazy. Despite this, Pilgrim continues to cause trouble for the remainder of Volume I of The Journey to the West , though as the entire epic contains 100 chapters, and Volume I is only the first 25, the monkey still has time to achieve redemption and enlightenment.

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The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 1 (Volume 1) Paperback – Illustrated, Dec 21 2012

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Anthony C. Yu’s translation of The Journey to the West ,initially published in 1983, introduced English-speaking audiences to the classic Chinese novel in its entirety for the first time. Written in the sixteenth century, The Journey to the West tells the story of the fourteen-year pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang, one of China’s most famous religious heroes, and his three supernatural disciples, in search of Buddhist scriptures. Throughout his journey, Xuanzang fights demons who wish to eat him, communes with spirits, and traverses a land riddled with a multitude of obstacles, both real and fantastical. An adventure rich with danger and excitement, this seminal work of the Chinese literary canonis by turns allegory, satire, and fantasy.

With over a hundred chapters written in both prose and poetry, The Journey to the West has always been a complicated and difficult text to render in English while preserving the lyricism of its language and the content of its plot. But Yu has successfully taken on the task, and in this new edition he has made his translations even more accurate and accessible. The explanatory notes are updated and augmented, and Yu has added new material to his introduction, based on his original research as well as on the newest literary criticism and scholarship on Chinese religious traditions. He has also modernized the transliterations included in each volume, using the now-standard Hanyu Pinyin romanization system. Perhaps most important, Yu has made changes to the translation itself in order to make it as precise as possible. One of the great works of Chinese literature, The Journey to the West is not only invaluable to scholars of Eastern religion and literature, but, in Yu’s elegant rendering, also a delight for any reader.

• Book 1 of 4 The Journey to the West Series
• Print length 576 pages
• Language English
• Publisher University of Chicago Press
• Publication date Dec 21 2012
• Dimensions 15.24 x 3.56 x 22.86 cm
• ISBN-10 022681680X
• ISBN-13 978-0226816807
• See all details

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About the author.

Anthony C. Yu is the Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Humanities and Professor, The Divinity School, Departments of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, English Language and Literature, Comparative Literature, and the Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago.

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0226971325
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; Revised edition (Dec 21 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 576 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 022681680X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226816807
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 879 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 3.56 x 22.86 cm
• #26,402 in Genre Fiction (Books)

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The Journey to the West

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Journey to the West: Introduction

by That's Mandarin | Oct 11, 2022 | Guest Blogs & Media

To spark your interest, our guest author Jeff Pepper from Imagin8 Press has shared a brief introduction of the book.

TIP: Scroll the the bottom of the article to discover links to a version of the book written for English-speaking students of Chinese!

Q: What is Journey to the West about?

Journey to the West (西游记, Xīyóu Jì), is a Chinese novel written in the 16th century by Wu Cheng’en (吴承恩, Wú Chéng’ēn).

It is probably the most famous and best-loved novel in China and is considered one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature. Its place in Chinese literature is roughly comparable to Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey in Western literature. Wikipedia sums up the book’s role perfectly, saying, “Enduringly popular, the tale is at once a comic adventure story, a humorous satire of Chinese bureaucracy, a spring of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory in which the group of pilgrims journeys towards enlightenment by the power and virtue of cooperation.”

Q: Is Journey to the West based on a real story?

The novel’s storyline is loosely based on an actual journey by a Buddhist monk also called Xuanzang who traveled from the city of Chang’an (today’s Xi’an) westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned 17 years later with priceless knowledge and texts of Buddhism.

Q: In short, what is Journey to the West about?

A long time ago, in a magical version of ancient China, the great Tang Empire is ruled by an emperor named Taizong. Due to a mixup involving the wrongful execution of a dragon king, Taizong falls ill, dies, and is dragged down to the underworld. There he comes face to face with the Ten Kings of the Underworld, survives a harrowing journey through hell, and finally escapes with the help of a deceased courtier.

When Taizong returns to the human world he is a changed man. He decides to send a monk to the Western Heaven (that is, India), to visit the Buddha, obtain holy scriptures, and bring them back to the people of the Tang Empire. This task is nearly impossible, requiring the crossing of thousands of miles of wild and dangerous territory. With guidance from the bodhisattva Guanyin, the emperor selects a young monk named Xuanzang.

Xuanzang is a brilliant young man but has a complicated history. In an earlier lifetime centuries before, he was a student of the Buddha but was careless in his studies. Expelled from the Buddha’s temple, he spent the next ten lifetimes meditating and acquiring merit. As an infant in his current lifetime he is nearly killed by bandits, placed in a floating basket by his widowed mother and sent downriver, rescued by a monk, and raised in a monastery. At age eighteen he learns his true history, and goes off to avenge his father’s death.

Later he is chosen by Taizong to undertake the epic journey to the west. Now called Tangseng (“monk from Tang”), he faces a near-impossible task: he must cross hundreds of mountains and thousands of rivers, and survive encounters with a horrifying series of bandits, monsters, demons, ghosts, evil kings, scheming monks, false Buddhas, and much more.

Q: How about the Monkey King and other famous characters?

Tangseng could never survive the journey on his own. Fortunately he acquires three powerful but deeply flawed disciples.

First is the monkey king Sun Wukong (孙悟空, S ūn W ù kōng , his name means “ape awakened to the void”), who he frees from a 500-year imprisonment under a mountain in punishment for creating havoc in heaven.

Second is Zhu Bajie (猪八戒, Zhū Bājiè, “pig of the eight prohibitions”), a gluttonous pig-man who is constantly fighting, and often succumbing to, his desires for food, sex and comfort.

And third is Sha Wujing (沙悟净, Shā Wùjìng, “sand seeking purity”), a reformed man-eating river demon.

All three have been converted to Buddhism by the monk, but they often slip back into their bad habits and cause Tangseng a great deal of trouble. Fortunately they all have great magical powers which come in handy for battling demons and monsters, and saving Tangseng from all sorts of trouble.

The story of this journey is described in this epic novel.

Q: How long is the original book?

The original Journey to the West is a very long book. It contains 100 chapters and is 588,000 Chinese characters long. It uses a very large vocabulary of 4,500 different words, over 90% of which are not included in HSK Levels 1-6, making it quite difficult for most non-native Chinese speakers to read.

The novel is also available in English translation, the best one being by the scholar Dr. Anthony Yu. His version fills four volumes and runs over 2,300 pages.

Q: Is the book suitable for Chinese beginners?

Fortunately for people learning to read Chinese, there is now another way to read this book. My writing partner Xiao Hui Wang and I have spent the last five years writing a series of 31 books that retell the Journey to the West story in language that is accessible to anyone learning to read Chinese at the HSK 3 level. The stories in these books are told in a way that matches the original as closely as possible, but because they are graded readers they are much easier to read. The first book, Rise of the Monkey King, is relatively short and uses just 512 Chinese words. Each book adds more new words and slightly increases the length of the story and complexity of the writing, leading step by step to the longest and most challenging book, Book 31, The Final Trial. All told, the entire series uses about 2,200 different Chinese words excluding proper nouns.

Fortunately, the original novel is not written as a single continuous story, but is broken up into more or less standalone episodes, each one between one and four chapters in length. This makes it possible to read and enjoy any of the 31 graded readers without having to read the ones that came before it.

Each book is written in Simplified Chinese. The books include pinyin, English translation, and a glossary. Free audio versions of each book are available free of charge on YouTube.

Q: Where can I get these books?

A list of all 31 books in the series, along with short descriptions and links to the Amazon product pages and free YouTube audiobooks, can be found on the Imagin8 Press home page, www.imagin8press.com .

by Jeff Pepper

Jeff Pepper ([email protected]) is President and CEO of Imagin8 Press , and has written dozens of books about Chinese language and culture.

Over his thirty-five year career he has founded and led several successful computer software firms, including one that became a publicly traded company. He’s authored two software related books and has been awarded three U.S. patents.

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Monkey King: Journey to the West (A Penguin Classics Hardcover) Hardcover – February 9, 2021

• Print length 384 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Penguin Classics
• Publication date February 9, 2021
• Dimensions 6.2 x 1.19 x 9.27 inches
• ISBN-10 0143107186
• ISBN-13 978-0143107187
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Editorial reviews, about the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

Chapter One

After Pan Gu created the universe, by separating earth and sky with his mighty ax, the world was divided into four continents, in the north, south, east, and west. Our story takes place in the east.

By a great ocean lay a land called Aolai, within which was a mountain called Flower-Fruit, home to sundry immortals. What a mountain it was: of crimson ridges and strange boulders, phoenixes and unicorns, evergreen grasses and immortal peaches. And on its peak sat a divine stone, thirty-six and a half feet high, twenty-four in circumference.

Since creation, this rock had been nourished by Heaven and Earth, the sun and the moon, until it was divinely inspired with an immortal embryo, and one day gave birth to a stone egg, about as large as a ball. After exposure to the air, it turned into a stone monkey, with perfectly sculpted features and limbs. This monkey learned to climb and run, then bowed in all four directions of the compass. Two golden rays shone from his eyes all the way to the Palace of the Polestar, startling the benevolent sage of Heaven, the Jade Emperor, while he sat on his throne in the Hall of Divine Mists surrounded by his immortal ministers. The emperor ordered two of his generals, Thousand-Mile Eye and Follow-the-Wind Ear, to look out of the South Gate of Heaven and locate the source of this light. "Your humble servants," they soon reported back, "have traced it back to Flower-Fruit Mountain, in the small country of Aolai on the eastern continent, where a rock has given birth to an egg, which has turned into a stone monkey, whose golden eyes have dazzled even Your Majesty. But now the monkey has paused for some refreshment, and the blaze has dimmed."

"The creatures of the mortal world are all born from heaven and earth," the Jade Emperor remarked tolerantly. "Nothing they do can surprise us."

The monkey gamboled over the mountains, eating grass, drinking from streams, picking mountain flowers, hunting for fruit; he kept company with wolves and snakes, tigers and panthers, befriended deer and antelope, and swore brotherhood with macaques and apes. At night, he slept below cliffs; at sunrise, he wandered through mountains and caves, with no sense of the passing of time.

One sweltering morning, he sheltered from the heat with a crowd of monkeys in the shade of some pines; they swung from branch to branch, built sand pagodas, and chased dragonflies and lizards. Afterward, bathing in a mountain stream, they noticed how its current seemed to tumble like rolling melons and wondered where it was coming from. "As we don't have anything particular to do today," one of them suggested, "let's follow the stream to its origin." With shrieks of happy agreement, they all scrambled up the mountain to a great curtain of a waterfall.

The monkeys clapped their hands in delight. "Whoever dares pass through the waterfall to discover the source of the water, and returns alive, can be our king."

After three calls for a volunteer, the stone monkey suddenly jumped out of the crowd. "I'll go!" This excellent monkey closed his eyes, crouched, then sprang with one bound through the sheet of water. Once on the other side, he opened his eyes. Before him was a gleaming iron bridge, under which flowed the source of the stream. From the bridge, he could see into a beautiful cave residence: cushioned with moss, hung with stalactites, furnished with carved benches and beds, and equipped with pans and stoves. In the middle of the bridge hung a stone tablet on which was written, in large, regular calligraphy, the following address:

Heavenly Water-Curtain Cave

The Blessed Land of Flower-Fruit Mountain

The stone monkey leaped back out through the waterfall. "Fantastic luck!" he whooped.

"What's it like inside?" the other monkeys crowded around to ask. "How deep is the water?"

"It's the perfect place for us to make our home, an ideal refuge from heaven's fits of temper," explained the stone monkey, and described the wonders of Water-Curtain Cave. "It could easily hold thousands of us. Let's move in straightaway."

"You go first and we'll follow behind!" yelped the others.

Once more, the stone monkey crouched, shut his eyes, and sprang through the water. "Come on!" he called. The braver of the monkeys immediately followed; the more nervous ones tweaked their ears, scratched their cheeks, stretched, and chattered a good deal before eventually leaping onto the bridge and into the cave. Once there, they were soon snatching at bowls, fighting over stoves and beds, and dragging things back and forth-for such is the mischief of monkeys. There was not a moment's peace until they'd fretted themselves into exhaustion.

The stone monkey spoke again: "A monkey stands and falls by his word. You promised that whoever dared pass through the waterfall and returned safely would be king. So what are you waiting for?"

Without a murmur of dissent, the monkeys immediately bowed and wished their new king a long, long life. Their new ruler quickly dropped his old name-Stone Monkey-in favor of Beautiful Monkey King and appointed a few of the monkeys to ministerial and civil service positions. The monkeys then devoted themselves to exploring the delights of Flower-Fruit Mountain by day and returning to Water-Curtain Cave at night.

The Beautiful Monkey King lived this happy, innocent life for somewhere between three and five hundred years. Then one day, while banqueting with the other monkeys, he suddenly became melancholy and began to weep. "What has upset our great king?" clamored the others.

"I fear for the future," the monkey king explained with a sigh.

"But we live in bliss," said his subjects, laughing, "slaves of neither the unicorn, phoenix, nor man. Why are you worrying about the future?"

The monkey king said: "Life is good now, but eventually we will grow old and fall into the clutches of Yama, King of the Underworld."

While the monkey masses-instantly fearful-buried their faces in their hands and mewled piteously, a long-armed ape jumped out of the crowd: "Our great king's new sense of mortality suggests the beginnings of a religious calling. Only three types of creature can escape King Yama and his wheel of life and death: Buddhas, immortals, and holy sages."

"Where are they to be found?" asked the monkey king.

"In ancient caves on divine mountains."

"I leave immediately," declared the monkey king. "Even if my quest takes me to the very end of the world, I will return with the secret of eternal life."

All the monkeys applauded wildly. "Marvelous! First, though, we will gather fruits from far away for a huge send-off feast." The next day was taken up with preparing and consuming this banquet, an extraordinary spread of plums, cherries, lychees, pears, dates, peaches, strawberries, almonds, walnuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, tangerines, sugarcane, persimmons and pomegranates, and coconut and grape wine. The monkey king sat at the head of the tables, with his subjects approaching in turn, in strict order of age and rank, to toast him with wine, flowers, and fruit.

The following day, the monkey king rose early. "Make me a dry pinewood raft, little monkeys, and fetch me a bamboo pole and some fruit for the journey." When all was ready, he hopped onto the raft and, pushing off with all his might, set off across the ocean. He was in luck, for a strong southeasterly wind blew him directly to the northwest coast of the southern continent. When his bamboo pole told him he was in shallow water, he abandoned the raft for the shoreline, where he encountered humans hunting for fish, wild geese, and clams and dredging salt.

He ran at them, making strange faces, and they dropped their baskets and nets and scattered in terror. The monkey king grabbed the slowest of them and stripped him of his clothes. After dressing in them, Monkey made a tour of the continent's towns and cities, studying human manners and speech. Eight or nine years passed. Monkey remained determined to seek the formula for eternal life, while the humans who surrounded him sought only money and fame, without a thought for their own mortality; no one cared what became of him.

Eventually, Monkey came to the Western Ocean. Still in search of immortals, he built himself another raft and floated across to the western continent. In time, he approached a beautiful, jagged mountain, thickly forested at its base and luxuriant with flowers, grasses, mosses, bamboo, and pines-an ideal hermit's refuge. Unconcerned about the danger of wolves, snakes, tigers, or leopards, Monkey climbed up to look around. When he reached the top, he suddenly heard a human voice singing deep within a copse of trees.

I sleep till dawn then wander the wood,

cutting creepers for my livelihood.

When I've gathered as much as I can hold,

I stroll singing through the market till it's sold.

I trade my load for wine and rice,

and never haggle over the price.

Living without ambition or conceit,

only immortals and Taoists will I meet.

"At last!" the monkey king rejoiced to himself. Skipping through the forest, he came face-to-face with a woodcutter busy at work, dressed in a large conical hat made of young bamboo, a cotton-gauze tunic with a silk sash, and straw sandals. "Salutations, immortal!" Monkey hailed him.

The flustered woodcutter dropped his ax. "Hush! I am a poor, ignorant man unable even to feed or clothe myself."

"Why, then, do you sing about immortals?" Monkey asked him.

The woodcutter laughed: "Oh, that. A neighbor of mine, an immortal as it happens, taught the song to me, to cheer me up when life was getting me down. A moment ago, I started worrying about something, so I sang it. I didn't know anyone was listening."

"Why don't you become his disciple? You could learn the secret of eternal life."

"I've not had an easy life," the woodcutter explained. "My father died when I was seven or eight. I'm an only child, and have been my mother's sole support ever since. And now that she's getting old, she needs me all the more. All we have is the rice and tea I get in exchange for my firewood. I can't abandon her for a religious life."

"Well, I'm sure you will be rewarded in later life for your filial devotion. In the meantime, though, could you point the way to the immortal's house, so that I can pay him a visit?"

"It's not far. This is Heart and Soul Mountain. About seven or eight miles to the south, you'll come to the Cave of the Tilted Moon and Three Stars, the home of an immortal called Subodhi, who has trained many disciples, and currently has thirty or forty studying under him."

Monkey tugged at the woodcutter. "Come with me! You won't regret it."

"Did you not listen to anything I said just now?" he answered, exasperated. "I've wood to chop. On your way now."

So Monkey left the woodcutter and found the path to the south. After seven or eight miles, a heavenly cave dwelling came into sight, shrouded in mists and light, framed by an emerald-green forest of bamboo and cypress and by moss-covered hanging cliffs. Cranes, phoenixes, apes, deer, lions, and elephants roamed about. The entrance was tightly sealed and the place seemed uninhabited, but a huge stone slab-thirty feet long by eight feet wide-told Monkey that the woodcutter had spoken the truth: the cave of the tilted moon and three stars, heart and soul mountain. Not daring to knock, Monkey loitered on a nearby pine, nibbling some nuts.

After a very short while, the door creaked open and a young immortal of exceptionally refined looks emerged. He wore a robe with loose, billowing sleeves; his hair was bound with silk cords. "Who's making all that noise?"

Jumping down from the tree, Monkey bowed. "I didn't mean to disturb you. I'm here to learn the secret of eternal life."

"You seek the Way, you say?" The young man smiled. "Our master just told me to look outside the front door for a new student."

"That would be me!" exclaimed Monkey.

"Come on, then," the young man said, ushering him inside.

Monkey followed the youth deep into the cave, past story upon story and row upon row of jeweled pavilions, towers, and arches, until they reached the foot of a jade platform, on top of which sat Subodhi, the famous Patriarch of the West; thirty trainee immortals sat on the ground below. "Master!" Monkey gasped, launching into a frenzy of kowtows.

"Tell me your name and where you're from," Subodhi asked, "before you smash your head beyond repair."

"I come from Water-Curtain Cave on Flower-Fruit Mountain in the land of Aolai on the eastern continent."

"Throw him out!" Subodhi roared. "Liars can't learn enlightenment! Two oceans and the southern continent lie between here and Aolai."

Monkey resumed his kowtowing, this time at double speed. "It's true!" he protested. "My journey here took more than ten years."

"Hmpf," conceded Subodhi. "That sounds about right. So what's your name? Who were your parents?"

"I have no parents," Monkey replied.

"Were you born from a tree, then?"

"All I can remember is an immortal rock on Flower-Fruit Mountain. One year, it split open, and there I was."

"I see," considered Subodhi, hiding his delight at this revelation. "So you were born of heaven and earth. Get up and walk about, so I can look at you." Monkey scampered this way and that. "You're not exactly classically handsome," Subodhi said, laughing, "but you look exactly as a monkey reared on fruit and nuts ought to. I'll give you a surname: Sun. Written one way, it means monkey. But I'll drop the animal radical, leaving us with the Sun that means child."

Monkey burbled with glee. "A surname! I've got a surname! But can I have a given name also, so that you can easily call me hither and thither?"

"The given names of my disciples rotate within a cycle of twelve characters."

"And those twelve characters are?"

"Broad, guang; great, da; wise, zhi; intelligent, hui; true, zhen; obedient, ru; of nature, xing; of the sea, hai; outstanding, ying; awoken, wu; rounded, yuan; enlightened, jue. As you fall into the tenth, 'awoken,' wu, I will call you Sun Wukong: Sun-who-has-awoken-to-emptiness. Happy with that?"

"Sun Wukong!" Monkey chortled. "I love it!"

The name spoke an important truth: for at the beginning of everything, there were no names-only emptiness. To advance from emptiness, living creatures must first become aware of it.

And if you wish to know what Monkey learned next, you must read on.

Chapter Two

While Monkey pranced delightedly about, Subodhi ordered the congregation to take him away and teach him some basic rules of hygiene and etiquette. The disciples found Monkey a place in the corridor where he could sleep, and the following morning he began to learn from his fellow students how to speak and behave. Day in, day out, they discussed scriptures and doctrines; he practiced calligraphy and burned incense. In his spare time, he swept the ground and weeded the gardens, tended to the trees and flowers, gathered wood and lit fires, and fetched water and carried drinks. Six or seven perfectly contented years slipped by. Eventually, Subodhi climbed back onto his rostrum and summoned his immortals for a lecture on doctrine: a synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics (February 9, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143107186
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143107187
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.2 x 1.19 x 9.27 inches
• #173 in Chinese Literature
• #5,019 in Historical Fantasy (Books)
• #19,683 in Classic Literature & Fiction

About the author

Cheng'en wu.

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