The Great Demon King

The Monkey King Sun Wukong leads the Tang monk and his two fellow disciples westward until their path is blocked by a river eight hundred miles wide. On the riverbank is a village where the people live in fear of the Great Demon King, who demands two human sacrifices each year. Sun Wukong and the pig-man Zhu Bajie come up with a clever plan to trick the Demon King and save the people of the village, but they soon discover that the Demon King has clever plans of his own. This is the 16th 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 47 through 49 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 Tangseng and his companions face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood. The first 16 books in the Journey to the West series have used a total of about 1800 different Chinese words, but only 839 are used in this book. All new words are defined on the page where they are first used. The book uses Traditional Chinese characters and includes pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary.