Journey to the West Trivia
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50 free Journey to the West trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Journey to the West trivia quiz covers the 16th-century Chinese novel that gave the world the Monkey King, and everything from Monkey Magic to Dragon Ball that grew out of it. The easy questions ask which monk the pilgrims escort, where they are going and why, which animal Zhu Bajie is, what Sun Wukong keeps in his ear and which manga hero is named after him. From there it moves through the plot: the stone egg, the havoc in heaven, the 500 years under a mountain, the headache-inducing golden band and the 81 tribulations. The hard end is for people who have read all 100 chapters: the disputed authorship, the earliest surviving edition, the real monk who defied an emperor's travel ban, the crystal goblet that got Sandy banished, the naval command Pigsy once held, the celestial 'Keeper of Horses' post, the sworn brothers, the banana-leaf fan, the woman who played Tripitaka on Japanese TV, the animation studio behind Havoc in Heaven and the game that sold 10 million copies in four days. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on the novel, Sun Wukong, Wu Cheng'en, Xuanzang, Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing, the Bull Demon King, Princess Iron Fan, Monkey (the TV series), Havoc in Heaven, Black Myth: Wukong and Dragon Ball before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Chinese mythology, Dragon Ball and classic literature quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Journey to the West is a fictionalised account of a pilgrimage by which real Chinese monk?
Xuanzang
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.
Q 02In Journey to the West, the pilgrims travel to India to fetch what?
Buddhist scriptures
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.
Q 03Journey to the West is traditionally attributed to which Ming dynasty writer?
Wu Cheng'en
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.
Q 04Sun Wukong is born from what?
A stone egg
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.
Q 05How many transformations does Sun Wukong master?
72
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.
Q 06What title does Sun Wukong give himself when he raises a flag in rebellion against the Jade Emperor?
Great Sage Equal to Heaven
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.
Q 07What lowly job does the Jade Emperor first give Sun Wukong in Heaven?
Keeper of Horses
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.
Q 08For how long is Sun Wukong imprisoned under Five Elements Mountain after the Buddha defeats him?
500 years
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.
Q 09Sun Wukong's staff, the Ruyi Jingu Bang, can be shrunk to the size of a needle and stored where?
In his ear
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.
Q 10How does Tang Sanzang bring Sun Wukong to heel when the monkey defies him?
A spell that tightens his headband
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.
Q 11Sun Wukong gains a steel-hard body and fiery golden eyes after being tempered in whose Eight-Trigram Furnace?
Laozi's
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.
Q 12Zhu Bajie was banished from Heaven for harassing which celestial figure?
Chang'e, who lives on the moon
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.
Q 13Before his fall, Zhu Bajie held which celestial command?
Q 21At the end of Journey to the West, the greedy Zhu Bajie is rewarded with which heavenly post?
Altar cleanser
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.
Q 22What title is Sun Wukong granted on completing the journey?
Victorious Fighting Buddha
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.
Q 23What does Sun Wukong ride to travel 108,000 li in a single leap?
A somersault cloud
Marshal of the Heavenly Canopy
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.
Q 14What is Zhu Bajie's weapon?
A nine-tooth rake
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.
Q 15Sha Wujing, the river ogre known as Sandy, was banished from Heaven for what offence?
Shattering a crystal goblet
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.
Q 16Tang Sanzang's horse is the son of which figure?
The Dragon King of the West Sea
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.
Q 17Why do demons want to eat Tang Sanzang?
His flesh is believed to grant immortality
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.
Q 18How many tribulations must Tang Sanzang endure before attaining Buddhahood?
81
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.
Q 19Which god, the Jade Emperor's nephew, matches Sun Wukong change for change in a duel of transformations and captures him?
Erlang Shen
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.
Q 20Tang Sanzang's past life was as a disciple of the Buddha with what name?
Golden Cicada
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.
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.
Q 24Which heavenly feast does Sun Wukong wreck after finding he was left off the guest list?
The Peach Banquet
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.
Q 25The real monk behind Journey to the West left China in 629 in defiance of a travel ban by which emperor?
Taizong of Tang
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.
Q 26The historical monk behind Journey to the West studied at which ancient Indian university?
Nalanda
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.
Q 27Who translated Journey to the West into English in 1942 as an abridgement titled simply Monkey?
Arthur Waley
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.
Q 28Which fourth great Chinese novel joins Journey to the West, Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber?
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
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.
Q 29Scholar Hu Shih suggested Sun Wukong may have been inspired by which hero of India's Ramayana?
Hanuman
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.
Q 30Which hit manga began as a loose retelling of Journey to the West before turning into a martial-arts saga?
Dragon Ball
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.