Traditional Chinese legend, retold in simple Mandarin
Journey to the West: The Spider Cave
西游记：盘丝洞
Journey to the West: The Spider Cave (西游记：盘丝洞, Xīyóujì: Pánsī Dòng) is a story from Journey to the West, the Chinese classic by Wu Cheng'en, retold in simple Mandarin as a 4-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 2 (Elementary).
Retold from Wu Cheng'en's classic novel Journey to the West: Tang Seng goes begging alone and walks into a house of seven spider spirits. Can Wukong beat a light that makes him blind?
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells how a hungry monk walked into a house of spiders.
- Sun Wukong · 孙悟空 — The Monkey King: clever, cheeky and quick, and always the first to smell a trap.
- Tang Seng · 唐僧 — A gentle monk who is sure he can beg for a bowl of rice on his own.
- Zhu Bajie · 猪八戒 — The pig-faced second disciple: always hungry, always sneaking, always in trouble.
- Sha Wujing · 沙悟净 — The quiet third disciple, who carries the bags, says little and worries a lot.
- The Eldest Sister · 大姐 — The eldest of seven spider spirits, sweet as honey until her smile drops.
- The Youngest Sister · 小妹 — The youngest spider spirit: giggly, hungry and bad at keeping secrets.
- The Hundred-Eyes Demon Lord · 百眼魔君 — The spiders' big brother, a demon lord whose robe has a hundred golden eyes that blaze with blinding light.
- Bodhisattva Pilanpo · 毗蓝婆菩萨 — A kind old bodhisattva from Purple Cloud Mountain who owns one very small, very strong needle.
- Taibai Jinxing · 太白金星 — A kindly old immortal from Heaven who brings the pilgrims news and warnings.
4 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: Master Goes Alone
师父自己去
Hungry Tang Seng insists on begging for his own dinner. The seven kind sisters in the big house have one strange thing in common: they love silk.
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Chapter 2: The Strange Fish
一条奇怪的鱼
Wukong finds Master hanging in a cave of cobwebs, and a very strange fish turns up at the sisters' hot spring. But somebody's big brother is on his way.
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Chapter 3: The Golden Light
金光
Master is free, but the sisters have a big brother with a hundred glowing eyes. Even the Monkey King cannot fight what he cannot see.
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Chapter 4: The Tiny Needle
小小的针
Blinded and alone, Wukong learns that only one tiny needle can beat the golden light. Then Tang Seng makes a promise, and a new warning comes.
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Key words in Journey to the West: The Spider Cave
Behind the story
This book retells chapters 72 and 73 of Journey to the West (西游记), the 16th-century novel usually credited to Wu Cheng'en (吴承恩). Chinese readers call the episode 盘丝洞, the “Coiled-Silk Cave,” after the home of seven spider spirits who trap Tang Seng in their silk. Here it carries on straight after the White Bone Demon, and it is retold in our own simple words.
The story has everything Chinese readers love about the novel: a kind master who will not wait for help, a monkey with a plan, a pig who cannot stay out of trouble, and an enemy that only a very small thing can beat. It is a favorite for cartoons, comic books and stage shows, and its cobwebs and spooky light make it a fine tale for a dark autumn night.
Did you know?
- 盘丝洞 means “Coiled-Silk Cave”: 盘 is to coil, and 丝 is silk thread. In the novel it is the home of seven spider spirits.
- In the novel, Zhu Bajie turns himself into a catfish (鲇鱼) to slip into the hot spring, which is where this book gets its Strange Fish.
- The Chinese idiom 大海捞针, “fishing a needle out of the sea,” means looking for something almost impossible to find. In this story, a tiny needle is the one thing strong enough to break a mighty light.