In this, the 11th book in our "Journey to the West" series, the monk Tangseng and his ragtag band of disciples come upon a strange pagoda in a mountain forest. Inside they discover the fearsome Yellow Robed Monster, living a quiet life with his wife and their two children. Unfortunately the monster has a bad habit of ambushing and eating travelers. The ancient and powerful monkey king Sun Wukong, the monk Tangseng and his other disciples find themselves drawn into a story of timeless love and complex lies, as they battle for survival against the monster and his allies.
This book is based on Journey to The West (, x yóu jì), an epic novel written in the 16th Century by Wu Chen'en. The novel is loosely based on an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng (called Xuanzang and Sanzang in earlier books), who traveled from the Chinese city of Chang'an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned 17 years later with priceless knowledge and texts of Buddhism. Over the course of the book the band of travelers face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood.
All of the stories in this series are all written in simple language suitable for intermediate Chinese learners. Our core vocabulary for this book is 1,200 words, made up of the 600 words of HSK3 plus another 600 or so words that were introduced in the previous books of the series. These words are all in the glossary at the back of the book. Whenever we introduce a new word or phrase, it's defined in a footnote on the page where it first appears, and also appears in the glossary.
In the main body of the book, each page of Chinese characters is matched with a facing page of pinyin. This is unusual for Chinese novels but we feel it's important. By including the pinyin, as well as a full English version and glossary at the end, we hope that every reader, no matter what level of mastery they have of the Chinese language, will be able to understand and enjoy the story we tell here.
Complete audiobooks of all books in this series are available on YouTube and can also be downloaded from the Imagin8 Press website.