孙悟空齐天大圣 · 1
Leaf 1 of the pilgrimage · 美猴王 Handsome Monkey King
Sun Wukong 孙悟空
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · one of the four pilgrims · nicknamed 美猴王 “Handsome Monkey King”
Born from stone, self-taught in death, and the only creature in the book who ever made heaven renegotiate.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 1
Leaping the Waterfall Unasked
靈根育孕A stone egg bursts; the macaque leaps the waterfall unbidden and is crowned king of the Water-Curtain Cave.
- ch. 2
Subodhi Names Him Wukong
菩提授道Thirty years sailing for a master, till Subodhi names him Wukong — Awakened to Emptiness — and teaches him seventy-two changes.
- ch. 3
Erased from the Book of Life
鬧地府Dragged off in his sleep, he walks out of the underworld with his own name erased from the Book of Life and Death.
- ch. 4-7
Havoc in Heaven
大鬧天宮Keeper of horses, then Great Sage Equal to Heaven: the peach banquet eaten, Laojun's furnace kicked over, a hundred thousand troops beaten.
- ch. 7
The Pillar That Was a Finger
五行定猴The Buddha bets him his palm against a somersault; Wukong reaches the farthest pillar and finds it is a finger.
- ch. 14
The Gold Fillet Yoke
心猿歸正Dug out of the mountain on the condition of a gold fillet he cannot see the reason for.
- ch. 27
Three Strikes at the Skeleton
三打白骨精He kills a woman, an old wife and an old man; the third was a skeleton, and the monk reads only three murders.
- ch. 57-58
Fighting His Own Face
二猿合戰An impostor with his face, his staff and his ring; he is the one who insists on being beaten to prove he is real.
- ch. 98
The Wordless Scriptures
真經無字He comes home with no texts at all, and accepts that this is the correct cargo.
結局 The ending
At Spirit Mountain he is made the Victorious Fighting Buddha and asks, politely, for the fillet back. The Buddha says that when he became a buddha the ring vanished of itself — which is the novel's one plain statement that the restraint was never the point.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials