The journey along an ancient trade route from Xi’an to Lanzhou to Dunhuang, through what was once known as Chinese Turkistan, over the Karakoram Pass and into India recalls a dedicated monk’s real-life travails and excites the imagination of adults and children alike: an enticing mix of the Wild West and the Arabian Nights.
A fictional narrative entitled The Journey to the West captures this spirit in a fantasy tale that also serves as a teaching tool for Buddism, subtly encouraging readers to challenge authority, something quite unique in China’s social fabric until the Revolution. This classic quest story has been compared with Homer’s Odyssey and even to the Wizard of Oz: both contained a subtext of social criticism. But, for its penetration into Chinese society at every age and income level, the best comparison might be to Bugs Bunny.
The Journey to the West, or Monkey King Stories, were attributed to a scholarly official named Wu Cheng-en in the 16th century. It is primarily an allegorical telling of the monk Xuanzang’s journey woven like a single thread through a fabric of legends, superstitions and popular tales. The real-life account of the unlikely adventurer’s journey was so fantastic, so full of hardship, anguish and ultimate triumph the fictional retelling became larger than life.
The physical journey, taken in violation of an Imperial edict, took Xuanzang across the Taklamakan Desert, into the Himalayan Mountains, through hostile, lawless territory and finally to India. In his quest, Xuanzang repeatedly defied the odds against him. When confronted by pirates intent on killing him, he converted them to Buddism.
While he felt his knowledge of Buddhism was inferior, based on sketchy writings available at the time in China, he was able to win a debate on the religion against foremost religious scholars in the country. He survived sandstorms, typhoons, capture and imprisonment to return both scholastically and spiritually enriched. He gained appointment to the post of Court Advisor.
The Monkey King himself was endowed with extraordinary gifts. Born from a rock and possessed if a cunning and rebellious nature, he excelled in the martial arts and quickly challenged the Jade Emperor, ruler of heaven, the seas, the earth and the underworld.
The heaven described in Journey to the West is a bureaucracy modeled after China’s convoluted hierarchy, with officials always intervening in the lives of common people. The upstart Monkey King then entered into a long period of battle with the god warriors and was finally subdued by the
Buddha Himself. He was held in Buddha’s hand under the mountain of five fingers for 500 years, until the hapless Monk Tripitaka Tang happened along to free him.
As Monk Tang became the Monkey King’s savior, the monkey king became Monk Tang’s disciple. Along the way West, the two picked up another pair of extraordinary beings sent by the Goddess Guanyin: Pigsy, once an honored general of the Imperial Army, now transformed into a pig for the crimes of seduction and gluttony, and Sandy, a landlocked, carplike sea monster with special (and useful) powers. The three are challenged by 81 dangers and calamities, and often the unfortunate monk Monk Tang is saved from his naive and trusting nature by the worldly Monkey King, working under the guidance of the Goddess of Compassion, Guanyin.
A listing of the characters in Journey to the West provides something of the Chinese worldview:
The Monkey King , Worldly, witty, intelligent and courageous Sun Wukong is nonetheless irrepressible and prone to mischief. In his encounter with the Buddha, a band placed around his forehead tightens when his thoughts lack proper Buddhist discipline.
Guanyin (Kuan Yin). - The Bodhisattva Guanyin, commonly called the Goddess of Mercy, is China’s favorite divine being. Her name means “heeding the cry.” She hears and helps all those who cry out to her in need. A Bodhisattva is an enlightened being who chooses to remain on earth to assist humanity on their spiritual path.
Tripitaka or Monk Tang is only human, with many human frailties: he is indecisive, cowardly, self-absorbed, gullible and often is deceived by demons in disguise.
Greedy Pigsy is all about appetite, seeking physical pleasures such as sleep, food and sexual gratification. Distracted by these pleasures, he is easily seduced from the pilgrimage by various villains such as the White Bone Demon or the Scorpion Queen in the guise of a beautiful girl.
Sandy represents the values of patient and skilled service. An alchemist, he applies his art to fighting the demons, and his magical powers, earned as a former resident of Heaven, are often put to use as well.
Jade Emperor in Heaven. - The Jade Emperor, titled ruler of Heaven and Earth, is in fact merely a supreme administrator. He is actually outranked by the divine triad: Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Confucius, while they, too are subject to manipulation by greater forces.
Although tourists from the Occidental world are more familiar with the travels of Marco Polo across the Silk Road than Xuanzang’s, The Journey to the West has certainly had its impact on domestic tourism: China’s western regions are dotted with Monkey King landmarks. In Guangzhou (Canton), Guangdong Province, Yuexiu Park features a walk-through attraction themed around The Journey to the West. A pathway meanders through the adventures of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and his companions. They are portrayed full size and often appear as animatronic props.
Filmed in the Stone Forest near Kunming, a popular CCTV production of the Monkey King stories popularized an already impressive natural landscape and eclipsed the legends of the local Yi people as the birthplace of Sun Wukong. Temple complexes from Kunming’s Golden Temple to Wutaishan in Shanxi Province stopped short of putting up “Sun Wukong slept here” signs, but local guides cheerfully trumpet the film venues between pointing out sacred relics.
The Flaming Mountains outside of Dunhuang on the fringe of the Taklamakan Desert are celebrated in the telling of Princess Iron Fan, one of the stories adapted for the Peking Opera. In this tale, the jealous Princess sets the mountain afire to block Monk Tang’s pilgrimage. So Sun Wukong steals her palm fan and puts out the flames in 49 strokes, burning his tail in the process and accounting for the red bottoms of monkeys, according to local legend.
Following his journey, Buddhism became more prevalent and more widely understood in China and subsequently elsewhere in the world. The record of his pilgrimage helped religious scholars to study Buddhism in its original texts, track its spread across Asia and to record the peoples and cultures along the Silk Road. And it was Xuanzang’s trip log that set off a turn-of-the-century scavenger hunt by European adventurers, intent on raiding any artifacts that could be gotten out of China.
Long after Xuanzang’s death, the tale of his adventures stirred the imagination of a nation that had turned inward, and addressed the mysteries of what lay beyond. Its appeal continues: look closely at the story behind the popular video game Dragonballz II and you’ll see that Son Goku is in fact the Monkey King, battling old villains rewired for the 21st century. Thus the saga of humble Xuanzang became the seed for the more popularly known Chinese classic fantasy tale, and in recent times, a video game craze and the basis for Silk Road tourism beginning as Xuanzang did in Xi’an.
More importantly, however, the tale endures as an enticement to travel through China’s western regions, its Frontier, just as it lures Western visitors with the mystique of Marco Polo and the Silk Road.
