Journey to the West: Real and Fake Monkey King

Meet the voices

• Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells how two Monkey Kings stood face to face and only the Buddha could tell them apart.
• Sun Wukong · 孙悟空 — The Monkey King, hot-tempered and loyal, who is sent away by his master and then finds that someone has stolen his face.
• Tang Seng · 唐僧 — The gentle monk who cannot bear to see anyone hurt, and who learns how much he needs his first disciple.
• Zhu Bajie · 猪八戒 — The pig-faced second disciple: lazy, greedy, and quick to change his mind about who is a rotten monkey.
• Sha Wujing · 沙悟净 — The quiet third disciple, who notices what is wrong and walks to the ends of the earth to set it right.
• The Fake Wukong · 假悟空 — A six-eared macaque who has copied Wukong down to his voice and his temper, and wants to fetch the scriptures in his place.
• Guanyin · 观音菩萨 — The gentle Bodhisattva of mercy, who keeps a lotus garden by the South Sea and cannot tell the two Wukongs apart.
• The Listening Beast · 谛听 — A small sleepy beast in the underworld whose huge ears hear every truth, and who keeps his eyes shut to listen better.
• The Buddha · 佛祖 — The calm and kindly Buddha of Thunder Monastery, who sees at once what no one else can.
• The Bandit Chief · 强盗头 — A rough roadside robber who picks the wrong monk to rob.
• The Jade Emperor · 玉皇大帝 — The ruler of Heaven, dignified and puzzled by two Monkey Kings.
• The Heavenly King · 天王 — A heavenly official who keeps the mirror that shows demons as they really are.
• King Yama · 阎王 — The dry, tired king of the underworld, who once found a monkey's name crossed out of his book.

6 chapters, one journey

Key words in Journey to the West: Real and Fake Monkey King

• 师父 shī fu: master
• 装 zhuāng: to pretend
• 念 niàn: to chant
• 棒 bàng: staff
• 一模一样 yì mú yí yàng: identical
• 赶 gǎn: to send away
• 样子 yàng zi: appearance
• 照 zhào: to illuminate
• 寺 sì: temple
• 疼 téng: to hurt

Behind the story

The story of the real and fake Monkey King comes from 西游记 (Journey to the West), the sixteenth-century novel by Wu Cheng'en, one of China's four great classical novels. It follows the monk Tang Seng and his disciples on their long road to fetch Buddhist scriptures.

Chinese readers know this episode as 真假美猴王, "the real and fake Handsome Monkey King". It is a favorite of Peking opera, television and school storybooks, and the word 真假 is still used today for any question of "which one is real?"

Did you know?

• In the novel, Wukong's golden headband tightens when Tang Seng says a special spell, which is how he keeps his temper in check.
• The fake Wukong is a 六耳猕猴, a six-eared macaque, who in the tale can hear even a whisper from far away.
• The 谛听 is a legendary beast said to hear the truth of everything, and in the novel it lies under the desk of the king of the underworld.