The Monkey King: A Journey to the West: A great Read from a Long Time Ago

Lately, the appearances of Sun Wukong, the monkey king, in computer games has caught my attention, so I wanted to know more.

Black Myth Wukong, which is a very close adaptation of the original story where the Monkey King, who possesses extraordinary abilities, must battle his way through a mystical world filled with powerful enemies and awe-inspiring creatures.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, 2010 on PlayStation 3. In the game, you play as a character named Monkey, who’s a skilled fighter navigating a post-apocalyptic world alongside a character named Trip. The villains include robotic enemies that look a bit like animals, including some pig-like ones.

Dota 2, where Sun Wukong appears as his well-known moniker, the Monkey King. His stats and abilities are all incredibly faithful to the mythological traits such as his extremely high speed, average defense, and robust attack power.

Fortnite, where Sun Wukong appears as an iconic skin inspired by the legendary Monkey King from Chinese mythology.

To fully understand the stories of the games and know who the different characters that appear are, especially in Black Myth Wukong, knowledge of the original story is required.

Sun Wukong, also known as the Monkey King, is a literary and religious figure best known as one of the main characters in the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. In the novel, Sun Wukong is a monkey born from a stone who acquires supernatural powers through Taoist practices. After rebelling against heaven, he is imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha. Five hundred years later, he accompanies the monk Tang Sanzang riding on the White Dragon Horse and two other disciples, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing, on a journey to obtain Buddhist sutras, known as the West or Western Paradise (India), where Buddha and his followers dwell.

Sun Wukong possesses many abilities. He has supernatural strength and is able to support the weight of two heavy mountains on his shoulders while running "with the speed of a meteor".^[3] He is extremely fast, able to travel 108,000 li (54,000 km, 34,000 mi) in one somersault. He has vast memorization skills and can remember every monkey ever born. As king of the monkeys, it is his duty to keep track of and protect every monkey. Sun Wukong acquires the 72 Earthly Transformations, which allow him to access 72 unique powers, including the ability to transform into animals and objects. He is a skilled fighter, capable of defeating the best warriors of heaven. His hair has magical properties, capable of making copies of himself or transforming into various weapons, animals and other things. He has partial weather manipulation skills, can freeze people in place, and can become invisible.

He would make a great Avenger.

16th century Chinese literature might be a bit hard to grasp without the cultural background, but luckily I discovered the modernized translation by Wu Cheng'en and Julia Lovell. It makes the very humorous book understandable to the modern mind and shortens some of the repetitive travel encounters that the pilgrims have with varying demons that want to eat them on their way to the west.

There is also a great performed narration by Robert Wu of this book available on Audible.com.

I highly recommend this read as it is a very funny and captivating adventure, even 500 years later.