Back to the Monkey King

I explained back in 2020 that I had started reading an abridged version of Journey to the West, but I confess, I kept forgetting to go back to it and may have stopped at about 90 pages in.   I was reading it on Scribd, which I wasn't using enough to justify the subscription, so cancelled it.   

But Sun Wukong keeps appearing on Twitter ads at the moment because of a high profile Chinese video game that's just been released, and I thought I should go back to the book and resume the story.  I found via nefarious means a downloadable copy of the same abridged version in epub format and have started again.

(Incidentally, I was reading books on my cheapo Lenovo tablet using Google Books, but I had this bad feeling that you can never trust Google to keep a service going, and didn't really understand where it was storing the books anyway, so I looked at other reader apps for Android.  Turns out there are plenty, and I have been using eBoox, which seems fine.  It goes and finds books whereever they have ended up in your tablet's drive, which I like.)

So, this is all preamble to noting that Youtube referred me to a young Chinese woman's channel in which she visits various scenic spots, and again makes me annoyed that so much of the landscape there looks fantastic but I am not sure I am up to visiting it out of concern of accidentally ending up in jail for 3 years for something inconsequential.   (Incidentally, I wonder what will happen to Western tourists in China if ever they start an invasion of Taiwan.  That worries me, too.) 

And now for the Monkey King connection:  this video she did, of a truly spectacular waterfall seemingly in the middle of nowhere, reminded me of his initial home in the "water curtain cave" - the entrance to which was concealed behind a waterfall:

Just gorgeous, although there seems a good chance of spraining your ankle while walking the rough path to get to this particular viewing site.    

While Googling around this topic, I came across this Journey to the West information site, which explains the appeal of the character generally: 

...Sun Wukong can be used as a great model for positive ambivalence in media, moving away from set limits of a single stereotype and rather being a constant motion of new ideas and new identities. Monkey has been changed from a mischievous monkey to a revolutionary hero to a post-modern rebel against authority throughout the years. But even throughout the constant changes and interpretations, people never lose sight of what the nature of Sun Wukong is: rebelliousness, variability, optimism, and persistence. 

Monkey is a transcending character as he is able to mediate contradictions within his own design, one being his gold-banded staff, a symbol of breaking barriers, and his golden filet (fig. 3), a symbol of limits. These two simple but prominent pieces of iconography immediately tell audiences who the character is supposed to be and what they are about.

Seems a fair take.  In one other post, we get this, much more hair-raising, bit of information:

The earliest mention of the name “Sun Wukong” that I’m aware of appears in an early-15th-century zaju play. It depicts the character as a sex-crazed maniac who kidnaps a princess to be his wife, tries to seduce Princess Iron Fan, and later gets erectile disfunction when his golden headband tightens while trying to have sex with a young maiden in the Kingdom of Women.

But, apparently I can expect no sudden shock of sexual antics in Journey:

He serves as a physical manifestation of the “Mind Monkey” (xinyuan, 心猿), a Buddho-Daoist philosophy denoting the disquieted thoughts that keep Man trapped in the illusory world of Saṃsāra (see the material below figure three here). This phrase is also surprisingly associated with sexual desire.

Despite the association above, Monkey shows no interest in sex throughout the entire novel. This may be a response to the highly sexualized Sun Wukong from the zaju play.

So, there you go.   I should do some work now...

Update:   It's hard to resist the temptation to follow the link to an article about Sun Wukong's lack of interest in sex.   And here it is:   

Lust, Caution, and Enlightenment
A Reexamination of Su Wukong’s Sexuality in Xiyou ji 

The abstract does make it sound an intriguing read, especially since I have posted before about how some Buddhists have thought sex (even of the pederast kind) could sometimes bring horny people to enlightenment:

The formation of the character of Sun Wukong has remained one of the most controversial issues in the field of Xiyou ji studies. While acknowledging that different strands might have fed into the image of Sun Wukong in the sixteenth- century novel Xiyou ji (Journey to the West), this paper calls attention to complex and sometimes contradictory representations of Sun Wukong’s sexuality and explores the mechanism of displacement that subtly operates in the novel and reveals itself through such representations. It further demonstrates the dual function performed by the displacement of Sun Wukong’s sexuality: on the one hand, it connects Sun Wukong to the image of the lustful ape in the white ape tradition; on the other hand, such displacement allows him to utilize and transcend his desire by experiencing the process of awakening to kong 空 by means of se 色 on his path to enlightenment. Therefore, a reexamination of Sun Wukong through the lens of sexuality helps draw together these two seemingly separate aspects and reveals a narrative in which Sun Wukong’s sexual desire not only encodes his hidden past associated with the white ape tradition but also generates significant meaning in light of the Buddhist context, that is, the notion that erotic encounters and fulfillment of sexual desire can be integrated into the Buddhist journey to enlightenment.

 Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a free copy of the paper on the net.  Must look harder...