Sun Wukong (Monkey King) Trivia
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60 free Sun Wukong (Monkey King) trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, is the star of the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West and one of the most-adapted characters in the world. This quiz covers his whole story: birth from a stone on Flower Fruit Mountain, the Taoist training that gave him immortality and 72 transformations, the size-changing staff he stole from a Dragon King, the drunken Havoc in Heaven, the bet with the Buddha that ended with 500 years under a mountain, and the pilgrimage west with Tang Sanzang, Pigsy and Sandy. The easy questions are the ones any fan of the legend can answer. The harder ones dig into the novel's real history: the Song-dynasty prompt-book where the Monkey Pilgrim first appears, the Yuan play that first used the name Sun Wukong, the scholars who argued about Hanuman, and the 1592 Nanjing edition. There is also a spread of adaptation questions, from Arthur Waley's Monkey and the 1961 animated Havoc in Heaven to the Japanese TV series Monkey, Dragon Ball's Son Goku and the 2024 hit game Black Myth: Wukong. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, its characters and its adaptations, and each question carries a citation you can follow. If you enjoy this one, try our Chinese Mythology and Greek Mythology quizzes next.
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Q 01According to Journey to the West, what is the Monkey King born from?
A magical stone
A magical stone on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit bursts and yields a stone egg, and the wind turns the egg into a monkey whose eyes shoot beams of gold light up to Heaven.
Q 02What lets Sun Wukong cover 108,000 li in an instant?
A cloud somersault
A cloud somersault takes a hand sign, a spell, a clenched fist and a shake of the body; his master taught it to him after seeing him tumble into the air where other immortals stamp.
Q 03How many transformations does Sun Wukong master?
72
72, and he picked the number himself: offered 36 heavenly changes or 72 earthly ones, he told his master he was "always eager to catch more fishes".
Q 04Where does the Monkey King keep his staff when he is not using it?
In his ear
In his ear, as a needle: he only has to call "Smaller!" three times and the twenty-foot iron pillar shrinks to fit, and "Bigger!" brings it back.
Q 05Sun Wukong becomes king of the monkeys by daring to leap through what?
A waterfall
A waterfall hid an iron bridge and a furnished cave, the Water Curtain Cave; the monkeys had sworn to crown whoever went through and came back unharmed.
Q 06Sun Wukong takes his staff from the undersea palace of the Dragon King of which sea?
East Sea
The East Sea's Dragon King, Ao Guang, offered lesser weapons first: Wukong tried a 7,200-jin halberd, called it too light and stuck it in the ground.
Q 07The novel says Wukong's staff was once a gauge for measuring the ancient floodwaters, used by which legendary ruler?
Yu the Great
Yu the Great set the depths of rivers and seas with it, which is why the Dragon King shrugs it off as a useless lump of iron and is talked into giving it away.
Q 08How did translator Anthony C. Yu render the name of Wukong's staff, Ruyi Jingu Bang?
The Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod
The Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod earns its first word at once: when Wukong grumbles that the pillar is too thick and too long, it shrinks to suit him.
Q 09What lowly job is the Monkey King given when Heaven first invites him in?
Keeper of the heavenly horses
Keeper of the heavenly horses is an unranked post, the lowest in Heaven; when he finds out, he tips over his desk and fights his way out of the stables and home.
Q 10The Silver-Horned King calls out to Wukong and sucks him into a gourd when Wukong does what?
Answers aloud
Answers aloud, and Wukong knew the rule: he gave a scrambled false name, answered to that, and was sucked in all the same. Later he stole the gourd, called the demon's name and bottled him too.
Q 11What does Wukong's self-proclaimed title Qitian Dasheng mean?
Great Sage, Heaven's Equal
Great Sage, Heaven's Equal was granted as an empty title, with no duties and no pay, purely to keep him quiet; only later was he handed real work, guarding the peach garden.
Q 12What slight sends Wukong off to wreck the Queen Mother's Peach Banquet before it starts?
Not invited
Not invited: the fairy maids picking peaches for the feast recited the guest list without his name, so he froze them with a spell and went off to drink the banquet wine himself.
Q 13Which deity, the Jade Emperor's nephew, fights Wukong to a standstill during the Havoc in Heaven?
Erlang Shen
Q 21What happens when Tang Sanzang chants the spell for Wukong's golden band?
It tightens and causes a headache
It tightens and causes a headache that leaves him rolling on the ground; he was tricked into putting it on, hidden in a flowered cap that the monk said taught scriptures by itself.
Q 22How many tribulations must the pilgrims of Journey to the West endure to earn enlightenment?
Eighty-one
Eighty-one is nine times nine, the number of perfection, so when the bodhisattva's tally comes up one short she has the pilgrims dropped out of the sky on their way home.
Q 23What title does the Monkey King receive when he attains Buddhahood at the end of the novel?
Erlang Shen sees through Wukong's best disguise, a wayside shrine, because the tail he couldn't hide stands behind it as a flagpole, where no shrine keeps one.
Q 14Whose steel ring, thrown from Heaven's gate, knocks Wukong off his feet so he can be bound?
Laozi's
Laozi's ring strikes Wukong on the head in the middle of a fight; as he scrambles up to run, a god's hound sinks its teeth into his calf.
Q 15The captured Wukong is sealed in the eight-trigram furnace for 49 days to extract what?
An elixir
An elixir, the one he had stolen: blades, fire and thunderbolts had all failed to mark him, because the pills he had swallowed had fused inside him and made him as hard as diamond.
Q 16What new power does the Monkey King bring out of the eight-trigram furnace?
Fiery eyes that see evil
Fiery eyes that see evil were an accident: he hid in the furnace's wind corner, where there was no flame, but the smoke blowing through stung his eyes red for good.
Q 17What does Wukong do at the five pillars he takes for the edge of the universe?
Scrawls graffiti and urinates
He scrawls graffiti and urinates to prove he got there, then finds his own writing on the Buddha's middle finger: the pillars were a hand, which becomes the mountain that pins him.
Q 18For how long is the Monkey King imprisoned under the mountain?
500 years
500 years pass before the monk Tang Sanzang peels the seal off the summit; Wukong tells him to walk well clear, then bursts out as the mountain splits.
Q 19What mantra is written on the paper talisman that seals Wukong under the mountain?
Om Mani Padme Hum
Om Mani Padme Hum, six gold characters on a slip of paper, is pasted on the summit once Wukong's head starts to work free, and the mountain at once takes root.
Q 20What is Wukong given to eat when hungry during his imprisonment?
Iron pellets
Iron pellets are, in the novel's telling, an act of mercy: the Buddha posts a local god to keep the prisoner fed, with molten copper to drink when he is thirsty.
Victorious Fighting Buddha
Victorious Fighting Buddha in hand, he at once asks to have his headband smashed, only to be told it has already gone; he reaches up and finds his head bare.
Q 24What does the given name Wukong mean?
Awakened to emptiness
Awakened to emptiness is the name his first teacher gives him, with the surname Sun: in the novel it is a word for monkey with the 'beast' part of its character taken away.
Q 25Wukong's first master raps his head three times and stalks off; what is the secret message?
Come at the third watch
Come at the third watch: three raps meant midnight, and the hands clasped behind the master's back meant the back door, where Wukong was taught immortality in secret.
Q 26Which demon gets Wukong banished by coming to Tang Sanzang as three innocent villagers in turn?
The White Bone Demon
The White Bone Demon comes as a girl, then her mother, then her father; Wukong strikes down all three, and the monk, seeing only murders, sends him away.
Q 27Which Hindu deity did scholar Hu Shih propose as a model for the Monkey King?
Hanuman
Hanuman, the monkey general of the Ramayana, was Hu Shih's candidate: he wrote that he doubted so mighty a monkey was a home-grown product rather than an import.
Q 28What does Wukong need to borrow to put out the Flaming Mountains?
A magic plantain fan
A magic plantain fan is the only cure, and the blaze is his own fault: the mountains caught fire from hot bricks that fell when he kicked over Heaven's furnace long before.
Q 29Wukong shouts "Change!" and turns a handful of what into clones of himself?
His body hairs
His body hairs, 84,000 of them, can each become whatever he likes; in his first fight he chews hair to bits, blows it out with the shout, and hundreds of little monkeys mob the demon.
Q 30Who offers the imprisoned Wukong his freedom if he will guard a monk travelling to fetch scriptures?
Guanyin
Guanyin finds him on her way east to seek out the pilgrim; he swears to reform on the spot, and she later slips the monk a headband in case he forgets.