If you're a UKer of my generation, you grew up knowing this song by heart:

https://youtu.be/J-SUoHmpRdM

So many of us were hooked on Monkey and we ended up absorbing new myths, new stories.

Singing along to Monkey Magic, who knew we were getting hooked on a 16th-century novel about the retrieval of sutras from India??

Makes me quite nostalgic to be watching #AmericanBornChinese and see Monkey and Pigsy again.

#JourneyToTheWest #WúChéng'ēn #XīYóuJì #吳承恩 #西遊記

:ablobmeltsoblove:

I have just read #MonkeyKing Journey toThe West (attr. #WuCheng'en, about 1580) in Julia Lovell's #translation for Penguin Classics, as I kept reading what #Chinese writers (Sanmao, Xiaolu Guo) say about it. It's an abridged version, only one poem. Successful in its own terms as an updated, whizz-bang tale -- rather like a big studio animation with jokes thrown in for the adults. I am slightly left with the feeling that I wish I had read Timothy Wu's more scholarly translation, or Waley's. 1/2