The Thousand Children

Tangseng and his disciples arrive at the capital of Bhiksu Kingdom and learn that it‘s been renamed "Boytown" because over a thousand little boys have been locked in cages in front of their homes. When they learn what fate awaits these children, Sun Wukong arranges to get them safely out of the city. Then he and the others unravel a plot devised by two demons who, disguised as a Daoist master and his lovely daughter, have beguiled the king. They must defeat the demon, release the king from his spell, and save the children. This is the 26th book in the best-selling Journey to the West series of stories for students learning to read Simplified Chinese. It is based on the events in Chapters 78 and 79 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, 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 the four travelers face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood. All 26 books in the Journey to the West series have used a total of about 2000 different Chinese words, but only 839 words are used in this book. We introduce 16 words for the first time in this book, and each one is defined on the page where it is first used. The book includes pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary.