Created: 14/06/2026 - Last updated: 20/06/2026
I somehow fell in love with Journey to the West and its main protagonist Sun Wukong, so I created this page to keep track of the novel as I read it.
The original Journey to the West novel (西遊記 / 西游记 / Xīyóujì) was published around 1592 in Ming China. The author is presumed to be Wú Chéng'ēn (吳承恩 / 吴承恩), but it's based partly on historical facts (the Buddhist monk Xuanzang's journey to India) and partly on folk tales. The novel is now considered to be one of the 4 Classic Chinese Novels.
I also have a Journey to the West adaptation page, and a fanfiction one.
The three main English translations of this novel are:
I'm currently reading the latest one, by Julia Lovell. It's 339 pages and 36 chapters long, about 1/4 of the original novel's length.
Progress: chapter 7/36 (2021 English translation by Julia Lovell)
On the land of Aolai, at the top of Flower Fruit Mountain, was a divine stone. The stone one day gave birth to a stone egg, which turned into a monkey with bright, golden eyes. One day, the monkey decided to find a proper shelter for himself and his fellow apes, and when he did find a nice cave hidden under a waterfall - the Water Curtain Cave - the others monkeys made him their king! After a few centuries living a peaceful life, Monkey King suddenly became aware of his own mortality, and decided to go on a journey to find immortality. He finds an immortal master, Subodhi, who teaches him many tricks (such as the 72 transformations, and the cloud somersault) and gives him his name - Sun for the monkey radical with the animal part removed, Wu for Awoken, Sun Wukong (孫悟空) meaning "Sun who has awoken to emptiness".
After about a decade with his master, Sun Wukong once shows off his powers to his fellow disciples, making Subodhi scared and furious that the other disciples will become jealous of the monkey, so he chases him away and makes him swear to never tell who taught him his tricks. Going back to Flower Fruit Mountain after decades spent travelling, Monkey King finds out that the Monstrous King of Chaos has attacked the area, so he goes and defeats the demon to rescue his fellow monkeys.
Monkey then arms his people with weapons stolen from a nearby town, before going to look for a proper weapon for himself. He visits the Palace of the Dragon King of the Eastern Ocean, Aoguang. The dragon king is impressed by Monkey King's powers and offers him the Obedient Golden-Hooped Staff, a huge and very heavy black iron rod with golden rings on each end. Monkey, who had previously been wearing a red tunic with a yellow sash, also asks for an armor so the Dragon King asks for help from his three brothers who give out cloud-hopping shoes in lotus-colored silk, a golden chain-mail cuirass and a purple-gold phoenix-feather cap. Monkey King then started to travel the world and show off his powers, earning himself powerful friends. He swore brotherhood with six great kings: Bull Demon, Dragon-Monster, Roc-Fiend, Lion-Camel, Macaque, and Giant-Ape. One night, after getting very drunk with them, he dreams of being taken to the Underworld. He fights against the Underworld guards and erases his name - as well as the name of all his monkey companions - from the ledger of death, making them all immortal. Soon after, both the Dragon King Aoguang and the Minister of Hell send complains to the Jade Emperor in Heaven about Sun Wukong, so the emperor sends Gold Star to summon Monkey to Heaven.
Arriving in Heaven, Monkey is brought to the Jade Emperor, who offers him the only job available: Imperial Groom, aka supervisor of the Heavenly stables. After two weeks of working incredibly hard and well, he learns how low ranking his job is, and immediately goes back to Flower Fruit Mountain. There, he finds out he's been gone for 10 years, one day on earth being equivalent to one year in Heaven. Upon learning of Monkey leaving his job, the Jade Emperor sends out King Li Jing and his third son Prince Nezha to capture him. They gather an army, descend upon Flower Fruit Mountain, and send Mighty-Spirit to go ask for Sun Wukong's surrender. The monkey comes out of Water-Curtain Cave with "resplendent battle dress, burning eyes and bared fangs", and declares that he will consider going back to Heaven if he is offered a new, worthy position. A fight breaks out, but Monkey quickly defeats Mighty-Spirit. Nezha comes next, looking like a baby at first but soon transforming into a 3 headed monster with 6 arms, each holding one magic weapon - but still he, too, leaves defeated. Wukong tells Nezha that he wants to be appointed at a higher grade position, under the title of Great Sage Equal to Heaven. Gold Star convinces the Jade Emperor to accept so as to not waste too many resources fighting Monkey, and so Monkey goes back to Heaven, where he's given a meaningless title, a mansion and some aids.
Having nothing to do in Heaven, Monkey chats up his neighbors until he's acquired a vast social network. The Jade Emperor doesn't like that idea very much, and decides to keep him busy by making him the caretaker of the Orchard of Immortal Peaches. The peaches growing there take between 3000 and 9000 years to ripen, and give various levels of immortality to whomever eats them. Although Monkey takes some parts of his job seriously, he also secretly eats quite a lot of the delicious, golden peaches... One day, the ladies in waiting of the Queen Mother come to pick up some peaches for the Great Grand Festival of Immortal Peaches, and are surprised at how few there are. Monkey, annoyed that he hasn't been invited to the festival, freezes them and sneaks into the party. First, he eats many peaches there and drinks a lot of wine, but now extremely drunk, he realizes he's going to be punished if he's found out. He tries to run away, and somehow ends up at Laozi's, where he finds some precious elexirs and drinks them all. This sobers him up, making him realize he did something even worse, so he decides to discreetly go back to Flower Fruit Mountain. Back home, he learns that his half a year in Heaven lasted over a century on Earth. After sharing his latests adventures with his monkeys, he goes back to Heaven to steal some more immortal wine and shares it with everybody. The Jade Emperor dispatches a whole army to capture him, but although his army suffers some losses, he manages to send the Heavenly armies retreating.
The great compassionate Bodhisattva Guanyin from Mount Potalaka comes to visit Heaven with her senior disciple Hui'an - who is also King Li's second son. When she learns of the mischief Monkey has created, she sends Hui'an to fight him, but he comes back defeated. The Jade Emperor then decides to send his nephew Erlang from the river Guan into the fight. The fight is fierce, and when Erland's army captures his monkey troops, Sun Wukong is distressed and tries to flee by transforming - but Erlang keeps up. When Monkey become a sparrow, Erland becomes a falcon; when Monkey becomes a fish, Erlang becomes a fish hawk. Monkey also transforms into a shrine before going to Erlang's temple and impersonating him. As Monkey starts to lose the fight, Laozi helps out by throwing his steel circlet, knocking down the Monkey King for good... The Jade Emperor rewards the warriors and condemns the Monkey King to the Demon Execution Block, where he will be chopped into small pieces until his death.
After a while trying to chop, mince, stab and slash Monkey without effect, the Heavenly executioners had to have the fact that the Demon Execution Block wasn't going to work on him. Laozi then tries to cook him in the Brazier of Eight Trigrams for 49 days, with no avail. The Jade Emperor sends for the Buddha residing in Thunderclap Monastery on Soul Mountain, and asks him for help with Monkey. The Buddha goes to see Monkey and asks him why is he creating disturbances. Monkey answers that he wants to replace the Jade Emperor on the throne, and Buddha tells him that if he manages to jump outside of his palm, he will be given the throne. Monkey jumps far off into space, and when he finds a nice place, he writes "The Great Sage Equal to Heaven Was Here" before peeing on the spot. Coming back to Buddha triumphant, Buddha laughts at him and shows him his marks are right there on his palm... Buddha emprisons Monkey in the Five Phases Mountain, leaving him only space enough to breathe and to move his paws a little. He's only fed iron pellets and molten copper. A prediction says that he will one day be freed by a priest from the future Tang empire.