Trouble in Heaven

Things begin to unravel for Sun Wukong as he sees the consequences of his outrageous actions. While trying to defend his troop of monkeys, he manages to offend the underwater Dragon King, the Dragon Kong‘s mother, all ten Kings of the Underworld, and the great Jade Emperor himself. Finally, goaded by a couple of troublemaking demons, he goes too far, calling himself the Great Sage Equal to Heaven and setting events in motion that cause him some serious trouble. This is the second book in the best-selling Journey to the West series of stories for students learning to read Chinese. It is based on the events in Chapters 3 and 4 of the epic 16th century novel of the same name by Wu Chen‘en. That novel was inspired by an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng (formerly called Xuanzang), who traveled from Chang‘an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned seventeen years later with priceless knowledge and spiritual texts. Over the course of the book Tangseng and his companions face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood. The first two books in the Journey to the West series have used a total of about 600 different Chinese words, but only 432 are used in this book. There are 46 new words introduced in this book, and each one is defined on the page where it is first used. The book uses Simplified Chinese characters and includes pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary.