Monkey King

In my first post I mentioned Journey to the West, the story of the Monkey King. It is one of the four classical Chinese novels, the other three being Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and the Dream of the Red Chamber. When I say four classical Chinese novels, I'm not stating my opinion, I'm stating the opinion of Chinese literati, I have only read Journey to the West and I'm working on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which will be part of the sequel to 7th Moon. These four books are supposed to be very influential to Chinese culture, and it seems they are particularly influential to Japanese writers. Journey to the West is influential enough that I feel I owe an entire post just to this one book, and you may be more familiar with it than you realize. This story has been the influence for two movies made in America, Forbidden Kingdom starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li, and the Lost Empire, starring Russell Wong. Unfortunately neither of them focus on the main story but rather tell stories that take place after. As much as I enjoy these stories the original is worthy of it's own movie, which does get it's share of attention in China, Japan, Korea and Thailand among other countries of Southeast Asia. Again, fans of Dragon Ball Z, say thank you to Wu Cheng En for writing down Journey to the West, because it was the inspiration for Dragon Ball, with Son Goku being named after the Monkey King himself; his power pole, the flying nimbus, and all of his transformations, especially the giant ape Oozaru are all owed to the Monkey King as well. More recently the story was made into the anime Saiyuki, and if anyone says anything about how that Goku is a rip off of DBZ Goku I'll scream because it's really more the other way around. The cast even made cameos in Inuyasha and Shaman King among other anime, but the purest form to make it to America was Monkey Magic, the version that drew me in because that Monkey King is the granddaddy of all bad asses. Don't believe me? Monkey King actually went to Heaven, told the gods to recognize him as "The Great Sage Equal of Heaven" and then trashes heaven when they refuse. Only Buddha is able to stop Monkey King, though if you really want to get philosophical, "the true Buddha lies within" which actually means that Monkey King is defeated by his own Karma manifested as Buddha, which means the only one who could defeat him is himself. Okay, so that last part has never actually been explicitly stated in text before, but it's implied.

The first seven chapters of the Journey to the West tell the story of the Monkey King's origin, which makes up most of the Monkey Magic anime. The Monkey King was born of a stone on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, and he was as strong as the stone from which he was born, so the other monkeys recognize him as their king. Eventually it occurs to him that he is still mortal and in fear of death seeks out an immortal sage to teach him the secret of eternal life. He finds a sage known as Subodhi (Master Roshi in DBZ) who names him Sun Wukong(Son Goku in Japanese, in english to mean "Monkey, aware of vacuity[nothing]", possibly meaning that Monkey knows nothing) teaches him not only the secret of eternal life but also martial arts (Stone Monkey style Kung Fu) how to ride clouds and how to transform, a skill which Monkey King refines to the point that he can transform a single hair into a complete clone. However, the one thing Subodhi can not teach him the discipline of good behavior and banishes the unruly Monkey King telling him never to return or let anyone know who trained him. Monkey King then visits the Dragon King of the East Sea and gets him to give him a magic iron rod that can change size at the will of it's wielder, so he can shrink it to a needle and hide it behind his ear and extend it to a quarterstaff for combat. Then Monkey King bullies the Dragon King of the South Sea(brother of the first dragon) into giving him a golden crown adorned with the feathers of the rare Fenghuang or Chinese Phoenix. The Dragon Kings complain to the Jade Emperor, the monarch of the gods and most powerful deity in China, who is also taking complaints from the realm of the dead concerning how Monkey King is cheating death. The Jade Emperor sends Prince Nezha(Chiao-Tzu in DBZ) to deal with Monkey King, but despite being one of the most powerful warriors among the gods, he fails to defeat Monkey King. The Jade Emperor then consults the wise Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, and they decide to bring Monkey King to Heaven to be a horse groom at the celestial stables so that they can appese his ego by letting him into heaven and then keep an eye on him. However, once Monkey King realizes this is the lowest position in heaven and he is considered a joke, he crashes the Peach Banquet, the most important feast in heaven, demands to be called the Great Sage Equal of Heaven, and when they refuse he proceeds to wage war on Heaven and wins. Buddha had been invited to attend the banquet and when he arrives sees the chaos that Monkey King has caused and takes a hold of him then challenges him to escape his grasp. Monkey King accepts the challenge believing he can easily overcome Buddha, and proceeds to the end of the universe where he makes his mark on one of five columns. He returns to Buddha to gloat only to find his mark on Buddha's finger at which point Buddha reveals he is everywhere, the columns were his fingers and therefore Monkey had never actually left his hand. Monkey King is then buried beneath a mountain as punishment for his crimes and sins. That's just the first seven chapters. This part of the story may be influenced by Hanuman the Hindu Monkey god from Ramayana, an Indian story. If the dates are to be believed, Monkey King ends up under the mountain sometime in the second century AD and the story could be just as old.

After the story of the Monkey King is told, the story shifts to the story of a priest known in Japanese as Sanzoh(I would presume this is Bulma in DBZ, Sanzoh is often portrayed by females) but the name in Chinese varies so much, I'll just stick with Priest Sanzoh. Sanzoh was actually a real priest of Buddhism during the Tang Dynasty, around the 7th Century AD. At that point, Buddhism had spread through China by word of mouth but there were no written scriptures, so Sanzoh takes up a pilgrimage to India to collect the scriptures from Buddha. That much is historically accurate, but the mythology takes over again when Sanzoh takes on three disciples(four if you count the horse that is actually a dragon) who are actually demons that are in need of redemption. The first disciple is Monkey King, who is subdued with a fillet, or circlet, that tightens and gives him migraines whenever Sanzoh recites a certain sutra given to him by the Bodhisattva of Mercy Kuan-Yin along with the fillet, and it is also enchanted so that Monkey King can not remove it. Next, Sanzoh's horse is eaten by a dragon who must then pay penance by taking the form of a horse and carry the priest for the rest of his journey. Then they meet a gluttonous, lecherous pig demon named Zhu Bajie(ChoHakkai in Japanese, Oolong in DBZ) who used to be a water god until he was caught harassing and molesting the moon goddess in a drunken stupor, then after serving time in hell was so drunk that he accidentally reincarnated as a pig. Finally, there is Sha Wujing(Sha Gojyo in Japanese, Yamcha in DBZ) who just managed to piss off the Jade Emperor on the wrong day(he dropped and broke a dish, apparently a very important one to put him on par with lecher and someone who tried to take over heaven) and got sentenced to dwell in the River of Flowing Sands and be skewered by a thousand swords every day, he eventually took up cannibalism and wears the skulls of nine monks who drowned in his river, surprisingly he is the most mellow of the three disciples. This brings us not quite a quarter of the way through the one hundred chapter novel. Long story short, the rest of the journey is a series of episodes that take about three chapters each and there is nothing that really connects any of them in any order or any way other than that Monkey King is somehow dragged into helping every time, invariably because either Sanzoh or Zhu Bajie gets in trouble. It seems that Sanzoh has led such a sheltered life he is incapable of surviving on his own in the world and the disciples were assigned to protect him as well as be his students. Eventually they do reach their goal in the final chapters, and you can probably skip to the last five chapters after Sha is recruited and the story will still make sense, but you'll miss some of the funniest misadventures you'll ever find in any seventh century Chinese text, or any other text for that matter.

The first seven chapters are so good, I decided to write a screenplay based on just that, with a little from a later chapter to give it a happy ending. I submitted it to Amazon Studios, they rejected it, if you would like to take a look at it and help improve it or help make it into a film, you can find it here. I also have a pilot script for 7th Moon the series there, so you can take a look at that, or buy the book at Amazon.com's main site. They also have a number of translations of Journey to the West available. I first read Arthur Waley's translation and I highly recommend it. I also highly recommend Monkey Magic which you can purchase at Amazon. Good luck finding it online, I've tried, I found it once, but it's one of the hardest to find series, but one of the best.