Transforming Monkey

Adaptation and Representation of a Chinese Epic

Hongmei Sun

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780295743202
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

Able to shape-shift and ride the clouds, wielding a magic cudgel and playing tricks, Sun Wukong (aka Monkey or the Monkey King) first attained superstar status as the protagonist of the sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West (Xiyou ji) and lives on in literature and popular culture internationally. In this far-ranging study Hongmei Sun discusses the thousand-year evolution of this figure in imperial China and multimedia adaptations in Republican, Maoist, and post-socialist China and the United States, including the film Princess Iron Fan (1941), Maoist revolutionary operas, online creative writings influenced by Hong Kong film A Chinese Odyssey (1995), and Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese. At the intersection of Chinese studies, Asian American studies, film studies, and translation and adaptation studies, Transforming Monkey provides a renewed understanding of the Monkey King character as a rebel and trickster, and demonstrates his impact on the Chinese self-conception of national identity as he travels through time and across borders.

CHAPTER 1

Who Is Sun Wukong?

The Image of the Monkey King in Journey to the West

At the beginning of the hundred-chapter novel Journey to the West, a monkey is born from a primeval stone egg. This uncommon birth makes it impossible to place him into a distinct taxonomic category. “Born of the essences of Heaven and Earth,” he is nonetheless still one of the “creatures from the world below.”¹ While the Monkey King belongs to both heaven and earth, his legendary birthplace is not easily locatable in either. According to the Buddhist cosmology introduced to the reader at the beginning of the first chapter, the Flower-Fruit Mountain (Huaguo Shan) appears to be located on the East Purvavideha Continent (Dong Shengshen Zhou), one of the four continents of the world. However, its geographic location relative to heaven and earth, or to the other continents that the monkey traverses in his journey, is never accounted for. To some extent the ambiguous birth and birthplace of the monkey contribute to his multivalent character.

At home on the Flower-Fruit Mountain, the monkey soon declares himself the Monkey King after demonstrating his prowess by crossing a waterfall and discovering a new territory, the Water-Curtain Cave, on behalf of the entire monkey kingdom. It is the first breakthrough in his life and is accomplished through crossing boundaries. Soon thereafter, and having become dissatisfied with a mortality that, by necessity, would subject him to the border between life and death, the self-proclaimed king sets off on a raft in search of a teacher who might guide him toward immortality. This journey brings him from the East Purvavideha Continent to the West Aparagodaniya Continent (Xi Niuhe Zhou), where he finds a master in the Patriarch Subhūti (Xuputi Zushi) on Lingtai Mountain. In chapter 1 the monkey has already accomplished a “journey to the west” on a smaller scale, a journey for himself. Of no small significance, the master, one of the ten disciples of the Buddha, is described here as one who finds harmony among Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism.² By means of this physical and spiritual journey from east to west, the monkey has acquired a name, Sun Wukong (Awaking to Emptiness), together with esoteric techniques enabling him to wield magical powers.

After returning to the Flower-Fruit Mountain, Sun Wukong successfully defends the subjects of his monkey kingdom by defeating a demon foe and thereby creating a name for himself among the demon kings. In addition, he befriends a number of immortal beings who occupy neighboring lands, one of whom is the Bull Demon King (Niumo Wang), who later becomes an antagonist of the pilgrims. By becoming brothers with these demons on earth, Sun Wukong posits himself as one of them. He tests his power in the water realms and convinces the dragon kings there to present him with their treasured magic iron, which becomes his famous iron rod. He also creates turmoil in hell when he deletes the names of his monkey tribe from the Register of Life and Death, hence attaining immortality, although unofficially. The sphere in which he can be active is thus enlarged to include the earth, the sea, and the underworld.

Heaven, having learned of the monkey’s mischievous behavior, appoints him as Supervisor of the Imperial Stables (Bimawen), in an effort to co-opt him. His territory is thus further enlarged to include heaven. This is an important step in his life since he is now recognized as a deity within the heavenly hierarchical system rather than an outsider demon. When Sun Wukong recognizes his low position in the celestial hierarchy, he returns to his mountain and lays claim to the title “Great Sage, Equal to Heaven,” essentially declaring himself the strongest demon in the world in possession of an outlaw power on a par with heaven’s. Dissatisfied with marginalization within one system, he simply chooses to create a parallel system and names himself its head. And when heaven is unable to take him by force, it once again must reabsorb the monkey peacefully by reaccepting him into the heavenly fold. Despite being officially recognized as the Great Sage, the Monkey King still constantly breaks rules in heaven, and ultimately creates havoc when he learns he is not invited to the Peach Banquet. The disgruntled monkey breaks off yet again from heaven, this time demanding that he replace the Jade Emperor himself. Significantly, the domains that Sun Wukong has so far tested and conquered include the earth, water, hell, and the Taoist heaven. Being active in all levels of the mythic cosmos enables him to enjoy immense growth in his realm—but more importantly, he becomes effectively limitless.

Sun Wukong’s rebellion comes to an end when he meets the Buddha. He accepts the wager the Buddha has proposed, which is to jump out from the Buddha’s palm. Failing to do so, since the Buddha’s palm can grow as fast as Wukong can jump, he is subsequently imprisoned under the Five Phases Mountain for five hundred years, which functions as a turning point in Monkey’s life and an intermission in the narrative. What Monkey goes through during this period is completely omitted by the narrative, which simply switches to the story of Tripitaka and the beginning of the journey. When the Monkey King reappears in the story, his life starts anew on a very different track.

The monkey is in due course released by the traveling monk Tripitaka, who becomes his master and gives him the name Pilgrim (Xingzhe). At the beginning the master is shocked by Wukong’s demonic behavior and worried that the monkey might be out of control. The Bodhisattva Guanyin responds by setting a fillet on the monkey’s head. The tightening of this band—in response to Tripitaka’s recitation of the Tight-Fillet Spell (Jingu Zhou)—enables Tripitaka to control the monkey’s actions. Henceforth Sun Wukong serves as Tripitaka’s protector and as leader of the other disciples. He becomes the monk’s most reliable defense against demons and monsters on their way to the West. In the following eighty-seven chapters, which are primarily a long series of captures and releases of the pilgrims by monsters, demons, animal spirits, and gods in disguise, Sun Wukong either defeats the adversaries himself or finds a natural or sociopolitical conqueror of the enemy to ensure victory.

In Journey to the West, Monkey’s life can be summarized as composed of two parts, with the Five Phases Mountain as the watershed.³ Before his subjugation by the Buddha under the Five Phases Mountain, his life can also be divided into several phases, each phase with a different name and identity:

I: Before Subjugation:

a. The nameless stone monkey

b. The Handsome Monkey King (Mei Houwang)

c. Sun Wukong (name given by Subhūti)

d. The Supervisor of the Imperial Stables (Bimawen)

e. The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven (Qitian Dasheng)

Intermission: 500 years under the Five Phases Mountain

II: After Subjugation

Pilgrim (Xingzhe)

The five phases of the monkey’s life before his subjugation by the Buddha demonstrate the innate drive of the monkey to test every limit that defines his sphere. With each step the monkey takes in his life, there is a transformation, a breakthrough, and his magic skills allow him to transgress limits. Step by step he broadens his sphere, challenging every authority, until he is facing the greatest cosmic power (who is, interestingly, the foreign Buddha from the West, invited by the indigenous god, the Jade Emperor). It is the spirit that challenges all limits that identifies him as a demon, one of those who dwell outside of the space of heavenly order. Since hierarchical control is about keeping boundaries and maintaining order, this kind of nonstop challenge cannot be accepted. Monkey therefore has to be either considered as a challenge from the outside (a demon) or changed and co-opted within the system.

The narrative does not address the meaning of Monkey’s imprisonment; the five hundred years of his life under the mountain are left undiscussed. The narrative simply branches off to other story lines, instead providing information about the Buddha’s intention to impart Buddhist canons to China, family stories of Tripitaka, the journey of the Tang emperor to the underworld, and the commission of Tripitaka as the scripture-seeking pilgrim after the epiphany of Guanyin. Five hundred years later, when Tripitaka comes to the Five Phases Mountain and releases Monkey, Wukong is very eager to accept his task as a disciple of the monk. The five hundred years serve as a narrative gutter,⁴ before which Monkey strives to surpass all boundaries—the patriarch of all beings—while after it the monkey becomes a servant, a pilgrim following the orders of a monk, confined by the magic headband. Before the gutter, he was a demon himself; after the gutter, he becomes a demon-subjugator and a demon killer. When encountering and fighting antagonist demons, the pilgrim monkey continually boasts to them about his glorious past as a demon monkey but then kills or subjugates them by himself or with celestial help. In this sense, the journey of the pilgrims is at the same time a story of demon-conquering and an account of the subjugation of the monkey himself. The eighty-seven chapters of the pilgrimage story continually replay self-contradictory anecdotes. He is simultaneously the one and the other, dual contradictions within one body.

But this is not only a journey from China to India.⁵ The Monkey King’s journey, far from unidirectional, is also full of upward and downward movement—he bounces between the heavenly gods and the demons and monsters on earth both before and after his submission. The nature of these trips does, however, change after his imprisonment. In the early phases of his life, the journeys up and down are carried out via his free will, whereas the later ups and downs as a pilgrim are mostly arranged by Guanyin and other gods, as part of the trials of the journey. Just as his somersault never enables him to jump out of the hand of Buddha, his somersaulting up and down during the pilgrimage never gets him out of the determined trajectory of his life. He is only fulfilling his task, the mission of a pilgrim who works as a mediator.

The character of the Monkey King is fundamentally self-contradictory. In the earlier stage of his life, he is a self-important heroic rebel, but later he transforms into a loyal disciple of the monk master and a pious believer in Buddhist thought. Monkey does go through some transitional periods during the journey, including a few incidents in which he is in disagreement with, yet has to obey, Tripitaka, but later in the journey the narrative demonstrates that his understanding of the Heart Sutra often even surpasses that of Tripitaka. For instance, when the group of five leave the Dharma-Destroying Kingdom (Mie Fa Guo), Tripitaka feels disturbed when seeing another evil-looking mountain in front of them on their way. Wukong reminds him of the gatha that the Crow’s Nest Zen Master taught him: “Seek not afar for Buddha on Spirit Mount; Mount Spirit lives only in your mind. There’s in each man a Spirit Mount stupa; Beneath there the Great Art must be refined.” He even gives Tripitaka instructions: “Maintain your vigilance with the utmost sincerity, and the Thunderclap will be right before your eyes. But when you afflict yourself like that with fears and troubled thoughts, then the Great Way and, indeed, Thunderclap will seem far away. Let’s stop all these wild guesses. Follow me.” Upon hearing Monkey’s words, Tripitaka feels “his mind and spirit immediately cheered up as all worries subsided.”⁶

The multivalence of the Monkey King is reflected in his multiple names and titles, each related to one of his multiple identities. The narrative refers to him as the monkey or the stone monkey (before he gains any title), (Handsome) Monkey King, (Sun) Wukong, or the Great Sage in the earlier stages of his life. The title that is used most often by the narrative voice is Pilgrim, and following that, the Great Sage. All of these names and titles are frequently used by other characters in addressing or referring to him in the story, but “Wukong” or “Monkey King” is almost never used by the narrative.⁷ Paradoxically, although the Monkey King wants to be the most powerful and most highly respected during his expanding phases, once he acquires the family name “Sun,” he never minds being referred to as a monkey and in fact often calls himself “Old Monkey” (Lao Sun), which can be seen as an indicator of the self-contradictory nature of Sun Wukong’s character. Sun is a family name given to him by Master Subhūti, because, as he explained, it comes from the character sun (monkey), but without the accompanying animal radical, it “accords with the Doctrine of Baby” since its compounds zi and xi means respectively “boy” and “baby.”⁸ Lao means old, but it is also often included in an appellation, especially for an elder, to show respect. Sun Wukong explained the meaning of lao quite well himself when responding to an enemy king: “[When] I caused great disturbance in the Celestial Palace five hundred years ago, all those divine warriors of the Ninefold Heaven wouldn’t have dared address me without the word ‘Venerable’ when they saw me.”⁹ In this quote, “venerable” is an accurate translation of lao. Lao and sun together, therefore, form a name that is an oxymoron. The translation “Old Monkey” is a choice made based on the sacrifice of the other meanings of both sun and lao, and understandably so, owing to the lack of corresponding expressions in English. But without the meaning of “venerable” and “baby,” the nature of the oxymoron in the name is lost. “Old Monkey” can also mean “Old Baby” or “Venerable Monkey,” which reveal more of the ambivalent nature of the Monkey King. Among his titles, Wukong’s favorite is “Great Sage, Equal to Heaven” (Qitian Dasheng), or simply “Great Sage,” a title reminding him of a glorious past when he was the bravest of demons creating upheaval in the heavenly court. This title, although self-granted at the beginning, is later recognized by the Jade Emperor and thus describes the monkey as both a demon and a god. In contrast, the title “Supervisor of the Imperial Stables” is least favored by the monkey—probably not only because it is a position of low rank but more importantly because it tacitly indicates Monkey’s once eagerness to yield to heaven and constrain his rebellious spirit.

Reflected by his names and titles, Sun Wukong juggles his multiple identities, some of which are sharply opposed to each other. Although Sun Wukong as Pilgrim has turned from a demon into a demon-terminator, he always proudly announces himself as the Monkey King and the Great Sage who once instigated havoc in heaven. In chapter 17, for instance, when he fights a demon for the first time in his pilgrimage, he gives a thirty-two-couplet-long self-introduction, a quite detailed outline of his life, including a vivid description of his battle against the divine troops, demonstrating his pride in that history. This grandiloquent self-introduction ends with a stately exclamation: “Go and ask in the four corners of the universe: You’ll learn I’m the famous ranking demon of all times!”¹⁰ On other occasions throughout the journey when encountering demons, Monkey will boast about himself in similar ways, bragging about once having been a splendid demon monkey.

THE MONKEY KING AS A TRICKSTER

The Monkey King can be considered a Chinese trickster, a t...