50 Fun Facts About Journey to the West

Journey to the West is a fictionalised account of a pilgrimage by which real Chinese monk?

Xuanzang. He came home in 645, and the emperor was so taken with his stories of foreign lands that he offered the monk a post as minister, which he turned down.

In Journey to the West, the pilgrims travel to India to fetch what?

Buddhist scriptures. At the last hurdle two of the Buddha's disciples, refused a gift, hand over blank scrolls, and the pilgrims have to go back and pay with their begging bowl.

Journey to the West is traditionally attributed to which Ming dynasty writer?

Wu Cheng'en. The novel came out anonymously; the scholar Hu Shih argued that records in Wu's home town credited him with it as early as 1625, but later scholars doubt the case.

Sun Wukong is born from what?

A stone egg. The wind turned it into a stone monkey, and when his eyes first opened they shot two beams of golden light that startled the Jade Emperor on his throne.

How many transformations does Sun Wukong master?

72. He was offered a set of 36 changes and chose the bigger one, but his tail will not transform: when he turns himself into a roadside temple it sticks up behind as a flagpole and gives him away.

What title does Sun Wukong give himself when he raises a flag in rebellion against the Jade Emperor?

Great Sage Equal to Heaven. Rather than fight on, the Jade Emperor let him keep the name as an empty title: a mansion in Heaven, but no duties and no salary.

What lowly job does the Jade Emperor first give Sun Wukong in Heaven?

Keeper of Horses. He does the job happily for a fortnight, until colleagues at a party let slip that it is too lowly even to carry a rank; he kicks over the table and storms home.

For how long is Sun Wukong imprisoned under Five Elements Mountain after the Buddha defeats him?

500 years. He bet the Buddha he could leap clear of his palm, flew to five pillars at the edge of the world and signed one, then learned they were the Buddha's fingers.

Sun Wukong's staff, the Ruyi Jingu Bang, can be shrunk to the size of a needle and stored where?

In his ear. The staff began as the iron rod with which Yu the Great gauged the depth of the flood, and it lay glowing in an undersea treasury in the days before Wukong came to claim it.

How does Tang Sanzang bring Sun Wukong to heel when the monkey defies him?

A spell that tightens his headband. Guanyin, disguised as an old woman, gave the monk a cap with the gold band hidden inside, and Wukong put it on himself.

Sun Wukong gains a steel-hard body and fiery golden eyes after being tempered in whose Eight-Trigram Furnace?

Laozi's. The plan was to burn the rebel to ash, but after weeks in the fire he burst out tougher than ever, kicked the furnace over and went back to wrecking Heaven.

Zhu Bajie was banished from Heaven for harassing which celestial figure?

Chang'e, who lives on the moon. Drunk at a heavenly banquet, he pestered her, was flogged and cast down to be reborn as a man, then took a wrong turn and came out of a sow.

Before his fall, Zhu Bajie held which celestial command?

Marshal of the Heavenly Canopy. He still boasts of the rank when Wukong finds him, though by then he is a pig demon living as a farmer's very unwelcome son-in-law.

What is Zhu Bajie's weapon?

A nine-tooth rake. It looks like a farm tool, and Wukong mocks it as one, but he insists it was forged in Heaven and presented to him by the Jade Emperor as his badge of office.

Sha Wujing, the river ogre known as Sandy, was banished from Heaven for what offence?

Shattering a crystal goblet. In the novel it was a slip of the hand at a banquet, yet it earned him 800 lashes and exile to a river, where a flying sword stabbed his ribs every seventh day.

Tang Sanzang's horse is the son of which figure?

The Dragon King of the West Sea. His son faced death for burning a palace pearl; spared by Guanyin, the young dragon ate the monk's horse and was made to take its place.

Why do demons want to eat Tang Sanzang?

His flesh is believed to grant immortality, because he has lived ten pure lives in a row; some she-demons would rather marry him and steal his yang energy instead.

How many tribulations must Tang Sanzang endure before attaining Buddhahood?

81. On the way home Guanyin reads the record, counts only eighty, and has the pilgrims dropped from the sky beside a river, where an old turtle tips them in.

Which god, the Jade Emperor's nephew, matches Sun Wukong change for change in a duel of transformations and captures him?

Erlang Shen. Even he needed help at the end: a steel ring dropped from Heaven knocked the rebel flat, and Erlang's hound sank its teeth into his calf.

Tang Sanzang's past life was as a disciple of the Buddha with what name?

Golden Cicada. He was the Buddha's own disciple, cast down to be reborn on earth because he would not listen to a sermon and made light of the teaching.

At the end of Journey to the West, the greedy Zhu Bajie is rewarded with which heavenly post?

Altar cleanser. When he protests that the others got grander titles, the Buddha points out that the job means eating the leftover offerings from every altar on earth.

What title is Sun Wukong granted on completing the journey?

Victorious Fighting Buddha. The Buddha grants it for subduing demons along the road, a neat end for the rebel he had once pinned under a mountain himself.

What does Sun Wukong ride to travel 108,000 li in a single leap?

A somersault cloud. When he first learns the trick, his fellow students joke that it will at least get him work as a courier, since his letters would never arrive late.

Which heavenly feast does Sun Wukong wreck after finding he was left off the guest list?

The Peach Banquet. He freezes the serving maids with a spell, drinks the wine laid out for the gods, then staggers into a heavenly laboratory and swallows five gourds of immortality pills.

The real monk behind Journey to the West left China in 629 in defiance of a travel ban by which emperor?

Taizong of Tang. The novel turns the history upside down: there the same emperor, back from a brush with the underworld, personally sends the monk on his quest.

The historical monk behind Journey to the West studied at which ancient Indian university?

Nalanda. He made such a name in India as a scholar that Harsha, the king of north India, sought him out and later smoothed his long road home.

Who translated Journey to the West into English in 1942 as an abridgement titled simply Monkey?

Arthur Waley. He never studied Chinese formally: he taught himself to read it at the British Museum, where his job among its Oriental prints and paintings called for it.

Which fourth great Chinese novel joins Journey to the West, Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber?

Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The foursome is a modern list, common only since the 1980s; early Qing publishers promoted a different four, with The Plum in the Golden Vase in the last seat.

Scholar Hu Shih suggested Sun Wukong may have been inspired by which hero of India's Ramayana?

Hanuman. Like Wukong he changes size at will, leaps across the sea and serves a holy master, though other scholars argue that China's own ape legends inspired him instead.

Which hit manga began as a loose retelling of Journey to the West before turning into a martial-arts saga?

Dragon Ball. Akira Toriyama started by loosely redrawing the novel as a comic adventure and kept the hero's name: read aloud in Toriyama's own language, Sun Wukong becomes Son Goku.

The cult TV series Monkey, loved in Britain for its outrageous English dub, was made in which country?

Japan. Nippon Television filmed it on location in north-west China and Inner Mongolia; the BBC then gave it new English dialogue, written by David Weir, from 1979.

In the TV series Monkey, what was unusual about the casting of the priest Tripitaka?

A woman played him. The role brought the actress Masako Natsume fans around the world, but she died of leukaemia in 1985 at only 27.

The 1961 animated classic Havoc in Heaven, retelling Wukong's rebellion, was made by which family of Chinese animation pioneers?

The Wan brothers. Twenty years earlier they had made Princess Iron Fan, China's first animated feature, which went on to inspire Osamu Tezuka, the future creator of Astro Boy.

The 1986 Chinese TV series of Journey to the West starred which actor as Sun Wukong?

Liu Xiao Ling Tong. The stage name means 'Little Six-Year-Old Child'; he was born into a family of opera actors who had made the Monkey King their speciality for generations.

Black Myth: Wukong, the 2024 hit based on Journey to the West, was developed by which Chinese studio?

Game Science. Its seven founding members had worked on the same online game at Tencent before striking out on their own in 2014; a demo they posted in 2020 to attract recruits went viral.

The playable hero of Black Myth: Wukong is a staff-wielding monkey known by what title?

The Destined One. Sun Wukong himself is gone when the game begins, and this successor must gather six relics, one for each of the old hero's senses.

Who co-wrote and produced the 2013 film Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons?

Stephen Chow. He had played the Monkey King himself in the 1995 cult comedy A Chinese Odyssey; this time he stayed behind the camera, co-directing with Derek Kwok.

The Bull Demon King, one of the pilgrims' great foes, is the estranged husband of Princess Iron Fan and father of whom?

Red Boy's Samadhi Fire nearly kills Wukong before Guanyin subdues him and makes him her disciple.

Princess Iron Fan's magical fan, needed to quench the Flaming Mountains, is made from what?

Banana leaves. One wave puts out a fire, a second raises a wind and a third brings rain, and anyone it is fanned at is hurled tens of thousands of li, as Wukong learns first-hand.

Early in Journey to the West, the Bull Demon King becomes Sun Wukong's what?

Sworn brother. Seven demon kings took the oath together, which is why Wukong later greets Princess Iron Fan as his sister-in-law when he comes to borrow her fan, and gets a sword swung at him.

The shapeshifting demoness Baigujing, whose true form is a skeleton, is known in English as what?

White Bone Spirit. She comes at the monk three times, as a girl, an old woman and an old man; Wukong strikes down each disguise, and his horrified master banishes him for murder.

Sun Wukong's name, given by his teacher Subhuti, means what?

Awakened to Emptiness. His fellow pilgrims were later named to match: the pig is Wuneng, 'awakened to ability', and the river ogre Wujing, 'awakened to purity'.

Which Chinese writer coined the label 'gods and demons fiction' for novels like Journey to the West?

Lu Xun. He coined it in the history of Chinese fiction he wrote while teaching at Beijing universities, and the book became such a standard work that later critics kept his label.

Sun Wukong's one notable weakness is fighting where, forcing the pilgrims to rely on Pigsy and Sandy?

Underwater. By his own admission he must keep up a water-repelling spell or turn into a fish or crab down there, so he cannot fight properly and leaves river demons to the other two.

Which impostor copies Sun Wukong so perfectly that even Guanyin cannot tell the two apart?

The Six-Eared Macaque. The pair brawl their way through Heaven and the underworld, and nothing can separate them until the Buddha names the fake, whom Wukong strikes dead on the spot.

In the 17th-century sequel Xiyoubu, a demon embodying desire traps Sun Wukong inside what?

A dream world. The author, Dong Yue, sends him wandering through time by way of a tower of mirrors, and at one point has him sit in for King Yama as judge of the dead.

The magic ginseng fruit that the pilgrims steal at Wuzhuang Temple looks like what?

A newborn baby. The tree takes some nine thousand years to ripen thirty of them, so when Wukong uproots it in a rage he has to fetch Guanyin to bring it back to life.

The 2018 series The New Legends of Monkey, shown worldwide on Netflix, was filmed in which country?

New Zealand. Filming began in Auckland in 2017; the show is a remake less of the novel than of the cult TV series Monkey, which had a devoted following there and in Australia.

The 'Bajie' in Zhu Bajie's name refers to eight what?

Precepts. He had already sworn off five pungent vegetables and three kinds of meat, so his new master named him for the eight, though gluttony stays his besetting sin.

Which 1408 compendium preserves excerpts of an early colloquial version of the Journey to the West story?

The Yongle Encyclopedia. Thousands of scholars compiled it by hand in 11,095 volumes, and fewer than 400 survive; one preserves a slice of the pilgrimage tale nearly two centuries older than the novel.