A Book by Wu Cheng’en as Hsi Yu Ki or Journey to the West, Translated in 1943 by Arthur Waley

(yes, this was an assignment I wrote for school, thus citations and page numbers)

Monkey, the English translated edition of the famous sixteenth century novel Hsi Yu Ki (Journey to the West) is one of the more endearing and widespread Chinese novels which surprisingly has made its mark on Western popular culture in interesting ways. Aside from the popularity of this English novelization, there have been numerous small adaptations that I have personally seen become very popular throughout my life. Some examples include 1998’s Monkey Magic, 2017’s The New Legends of Monkey and a recent Netflix animated feature called The Monkey King. Perhaps the biggest import (in this case Japanese) to hit America in recent memory, the late Akira Toriyama’s manga and anime series Dragon ball, has its origins in being an incredibly loose adaptation of the classic novel, at least at the beginning. Despite seeing all of this, and my vague familiarity with the source material, I had never actually read any version of the original book until now.

Hsi Yu Ki is thought to have been written by Chinese poet Wu Cheng’en, but due to its publication being anonymous in a time when common novels were reviled, this has been contested in the past. In the introduction to the book, literary scholar Hu Shih points out that: “…to the people of Huai-an, the birthplace of Wu Cheng’en, the authorship of the story was apparently well-known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The local history (gazetteer), compiled in 1625, definitely recorded that the novel Hsi Yu Ki was written by him. “(pg. 3) This translated edition is from 1943 and is not a full translation of the massive text. Monkey only contains about one-third of the massive original one-hundred chapters, for reasons of size. The introduction points out that Arthur Waley, the translator, went to great effort to preserve the humorous dialogue found in the story instead of basically summarizing the text like others had done. This is great because this dialogue is really fun.

While Monkey contains a wide and varied cast of characters, the book’s titular hero is perhaps the most interesting character in the book. Monkey exemplifies the trickster character archetype considering almost everything he does in the book is an elaborate plan to enrich himself and befuddle his enemies /adversaries. The majority of the first seven chapters or so involve Monkey’s relentless quest towards becoming immortal. He uses his intelligence and cunning to convince a monk to teach him magic, which later allows him to join the many deities of Chinese folklore in Heaven. Much like the legendary Icarus, Monkey eventually “flies far to close to the sun” and gets slapped down hard by The Jade Emperor, to which he shows absolutely no reverence to, claiming and insisting on being his equal and to be known as “The sage, equal of heaven.”

Monkey is very anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment, perhaps due to his origins of being a lowly animal in a world where his people were often looked down upon. Rather than being downtrodden by circumstance, Monkey rises up to the point where he ultimately challenges and mocks heaven itself. After the initial chapters, Monkey becomes much more of a side-character in the overall tale of Hsüan Tsang and his journey to India to capture Buddhist scriptures, but one can easily see why he stands out so much. Everyone loves and underdog story, and you honestly can’t get much more of an underdog than a character that tries to show he is equal to the gods themselves only to be punished for his trouble. Even though Monkey has some bad tendencies, even killing people with little remorse, he is much akin to other legendary anti-establishment near anti-heroes such as Robin Hood or even the largely Fictionalized Jesse James. 

As mentioned before, Monkey is forced to accompany a Buddhist monk named Hsüan Tsang (a.k.a Tripitaka) on a journey to India from China in exchange for his release from being trapped under a huge mountain for five-hundred years. Tripitaka enlists other monks in similar circumstances to Monkey including a Pig-man named “Pigsy,” and an Ogre named “Sandy.” Rather than being a purely fictional character, Hsüan Tsang is actually a historic person. As pointed out in the book, “Tripitaka, whose pilgrimage to India is the subject of the story, is a real person […] he lived in the 7^th century A.D. and there were full contemporary accounts of his journey.” (pg. 7)

This story does that a lot, taking actual people such as Tsang, Laozi, and even The Buddha and creating fictionalized versions for the purpose of telling a story. The important thing to know is that Hsüan Tsang did, in fact, make a long trek from China to India to study with Indian masters, and bring true translations of scripture back with him. Due to this, he is very famous and well-regarded by Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism.

Monkey reminded me, very much, of other old folkloric tales you find throughout history. I personally have read a lot of Icelandic Germanic Pagan material such as the Eddas and some Icelandic Sagas, and the structure of how those are composed is somewhat similar to what we have here with Monkey. Each chapter is very episodic and seems to be somewhat of a self-contained parable of some sort. I liked the inclusion of the little end of chapter “to be continued” blurbs that read like “If you do not know what the upshot was and how he fared now that he was back in his old home, you must listen to what is related in the next chapter”. (pg. 31) They reminded me of serialized classic television and radio dramas and would make the content of Monkey perfect for a serialized storytelling session of some sort. The cliffhangers would keep people coming back for more and more installments.  

Considering the nature to which Journey to the West was originally written, anonymously and outside of the norms of a Confucian education, I am going out on a limb to say that the author likely did not enjoy how stuffy his circumstances were. Many things in Monkey appear to be satire for the various Chinese religions of the time. In fact, the book could even be a thinly veiled rebuke of the overall class structure and governmental system of the time. It was interesting to see all of the main religions merged together in heaven, likely representing how Chinese culture, at the time, attempted to assimilate Buddhist and Daoist principles into the Confucian framework. Did this work? Well, at least in Monkey, the coexistence is lampooned for comical effect.

Daoism is especially portrayed in a humorous way, with Laozi (Lao Tzu in the book) being portrayed as some sort of weird courtly alchemist for heaven, concocting special elixirs that the highest ranking members of the court partake in at big parties. The Jade Emperor is another Daoist character that is much less of a supreme deity, and much more like the CEO of heaven. Heaven runs like an intricate bureaucratic nightmare, with everything being a part of some over-the-top ritual. One of the main reasons that Monkey falls out of favor with many, including The Jade Emperor, is that he does not respect any of these rituals, any sort of hierarchies, and sees everything as silly.

One example that made me chuckle a bit was a segment where the reader discovers that all of the most noble heavenly figures gather every nine thousand years for a big feast that involves special peaches that bloom and ripen only once during that timeframe. Monkey is, humorously, put in charge of the garden that these peaches come from, and as one can imagine, shenanigans ensue. Monkey gets drunk with special heavenly liquor and proceeds to eat almost all of the large special peaches himself, infuriating everyone. By stepping out of his class and making a mistake that is more comical than not, Monkey is seen as being too much of a troublemaker and is dealt with a heavy-handedness that does not seem to sync up with his crimes.  

Buddhism is portrayed a bit more favorably, although a lot of the humor from the second section of the book revolves around everyone reacting to how pious Tripitaka is, especially at times when it’s not particularly useful for the party on their quest. At one point, a man named Mr. Kao offers gold and silver pieces to the monks as a contribution to their trip. To this. Tripitaka pointed out that “Traveling priests must beg their way as they go. We cannot accept money or silk”. (pg. 157) and “A priest that accepts as much as a thread of silk must do penance for a thousand aeons to expiate his crime.” (pg. 158) This, of course, amuses and flabbergasts his new disciples. One gets the idea that Buddhism was seen as cartoonishly ascetic by the author at least. Other parts of the book almost point towards Buddhists being cowardly, perhaps even lacking the sort of heroism that Monkey himself embodies.   

I did notice that unreligious characters including the other Monkeys that The Monkey King presided over before his ascendence, and even Pigsy are characterized as happy and care-free, although Pigsy is somewhat made out to be a lazy buffoon at times. Considering how much stress the characters that partake in the state religions can be, I think the Monkeys may have had the right idea.

Overall, I am glad I was finally able to read Monkey by Wu Cheng’en, as translated by Arthur Waley as it finally filled in some blanks for me with the aforementioned media properties, I was familiar with already. The care-free heroism of the titular character is endearing and infectious, and I can see why the story has been such a prominent part of Chinese (or honestly just Asian) culture since its publication. It’s a hilarious satire of a stuffy society by way of a great adventure story, and so far, one of the best bits of Chinese literature I have read.