@herefortripitaka

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 84: Time to stop crying

When you are a persecuted minority, do you:

(A) Cry

(B) Appeal to the oppressor's sense of fairness and mercy

(C) Give up on your most cherished goals

(D) Disguise yourself by making all the majority oppressors look like members of your minority?

Things may look daunting; even impossible. But the result is not a foregone conclusion.

Fair warning, I felt a bit flat writing this, and it probably comes across. It's a fun chapter and I loved it. It just didn't translate to the post. But I'm trying to let go and just post things anyway, or I'll never get on with it.

Our travellers are walking through a drizzle on a hot summer day when an old woman walks out to them, leading a young child by the hand. She tells them to stop immediately: the road leads only to death.

Okay, the GIF is not quite right. But you get the gist.

Tripitaka is startled but dismounts and bows to her. He's skeptical, but she explains that not far from here is the Dharma-Destroying Kingdom. The king has sworn to kill 10,000 Buddhist priests, and he only needs four more deaths to reach his goal. If they keep walking the road to the west, they will be the four he needs.

Tripitaka is terrified and starts shaking all over.

He thanks her profusely for the warning and asks if there's another way. She laughs and tells him there is no other road to the west. They could only avoid it by flying.

Bajie tells her off for being scary, and tells her they actually can fly.

But Wukong recognises that she is GuanYin and the kid is the Boy Skilled in Wealth. He drops to his knees and begs her to forgive them for failing to meet her.

I'm kind of confused by this. I understand why she would warn them of the danger ahead. But it's like she went further, into trying to scare them off. Why? Was she testing their resolution and courage? Well, I guess I'm no more enlightened than Bajie.

Speaking of GuanYin, I only found out this year that Kiyomizydera is dedicated to Kannon, the Japanese version of GuanYin. If you are ever in Kyoto, I hope you get a chance to visit - and to drink the water.

Anyway. Bajie is afraid, but Wukong is as always the voice of courage. The slightly dismissive voice of courage, perhaps. The "come on, knock it off, let's go on with it" voice of courage rather than "the starry-eyed, inspiring podium speech" kind of courage. I think I like it.

And we proceed to have a delightful chapter.

There's a maths countdown poem as Wukong heads into town alone:

He disguises himself as a moth and sneaks around. He transforms again into a rat, and steals some clothes from guests at a hotel so the pilgrims can pose as civilians. He's almost foiled by the owner of the hotel, who is weirdly aware of the risk of clothes being stolen, and his wife, who is up mending clothes instead of conveniently falling asleep so Wukong can sneak past her. She busts Wukong and screams to her husband, but her husband is too slow to catch rat-Wukong.

The pilgrims change into the civilian clothes and hide their bald heads under head wraps. They pose as horse traders, and Bai Long Ma as one of the horses for sale.

Not suss at all.

They're adorable. I think the TV show captures that more than the text, sometimes.

They find a hotel. Not the one that Wukong stole the clothes from, where people have awkwardly started to discover their clothes are missing.

They go through some elaborate excuses, explaining why they need a vegetarian dinner just totally as a one-off for that night because they are totally not monks and totally not vegetarian 365 days a year. They make excuses for the hotel not to supply them with hookers for the night, and pretend to be very enthusiastic about planning to have hookers the next night instead.

They're afraid their head wraps will fall off during the night and someone may spot their bald heads, so they make excuses to demand a lightless, breeze-free place to sleep. This is how they end up sleeping at the home of the hotelier's daughter, in a large wardrobe trunk. Bai Long Ma is tethered to the side of it.

So all is going well. But Wukong can't help but be mischevious, so he talks some nonsense, pretending they have huge amounts of silver. Some of the hotel staff are thieves and overhear. They come back with their thief friends and try to open the wardrobe, but it's too tightly shut. So they steal it and the horse, with the pilgrims still inside. They get into a scuffle with some city guards on their way out of the city, so the government chases them. The thieves scatter and the government officials totally fail to catch them. But they take the wardrobe.

I guess people back in the day got just as excited about horses and some people get about cars these days, because they get stars in their eyes over Bai Long Ma. (Why am I talking about starry eyes so much suddenly?)

As usual, Bai Long Ma can't be bothered transforming into human or dragon form, and just rolls with it. He's got a new owner now. I mean, I could understand. It's a lot more attention than the pilgrims have given him in ages. But I don't think it's even that. It's just Bai Long Ma going with the flow as usual.

The rest of the pilgrims are trapped in the wardrobe, which is being watched by soldiers until dawn, when they plan to approach the king about its disposal.

Tripitaka is not happy. He thinks they're screwed.

I don't blame him either. I'd be feeling pretty stuck between a rock and a hard place myself.

Wukong argues right back, telling him to calm down and trust him.

I think I often take it for granted, cos Wukong seems like such a boofhead. And so invincible. But it's actually a pretty big deal that he's always so willing to step up and fight against the odds. If it weren't for him, there would be no journey to the west. Tripitaka would just be stuck in one of the first caves, crying, barely any distance from where he started.

Yeah, I know. I just depicted both Tripitaka and Wukong as Sailor Moon.

I guess it's easy for compassion and one's sensitive side to despair, and that is where the mind and one's more gutsy side has to step in.

In the dead of the night, Wukong uses the iron rod as a microscopic drill, drills a small hole, transforms into an ant and crawls out.

He then changes back to his original form and flies into the palace.

He rips off all the hairs from his left arm and changes them into mini Wukongs.

He rips off the hairs from his right arm and changes them into sleep-inducing insects.

That's a lot of hairs. Ouch, Wukong.

He summons local spirits to guide the insects to the resident of every official in town, to sedate them into a deep sleep.

He transforms his rod into hundreds and thousands of razor blades.

He tells the mini Wukongs to take them into the residences and shave all the officials' heads.

And that is how we get to the king and queen waking up, bald as eggs, and half the palace bursting into their room, bald too.

The king cries, figures it's because he killed all those monks, and immediately decides that the best solution is a cover-up. He forbids everybody from mentioning their baldness.

And that's it for this chapter. I have to admit, I did not see this game of 'Where's Baldie" coming.

I guess it's premature to say anything, cos clearly this arc is not over. But I do love it. Maximum hijinks, minimal chauvinism. There was some, but let's not get into it.

Oh. But I do want to add this pic I found of an actual Bald Convention, cos it's awesome.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

---

Image credits: The usual spiel. The images above are either AI, or random pictures from the web that I’ve modified, or not modified, or a Frankenstein of both. They are not original. The AI image generation is by Stable Diffusion. The pre-existing images should turn up with reverse googling, but feel free to ask and I’ll dig up sources.

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 83: You pinged?

Last chapter, the demon had just escorted Tripitaka out of the cave, with Wukong still in her stomach, holding her to ransom.

Wukong starts to exit her mouth, propping it open with the iron rod to prevent untimely chewing.

Clearly he's got her number, because the second he's out, she swings at him with her swords. And they're off.

Sandy wants to help. Bajie thinks he's nuts. But Sandy whips him up with poetic talk of flatulence.

The demon figures she's outnumbered. She pulls the old slipper trick again and flees.

Guess who isn't there guarding Tripitaka as she exits? Yeah. Bye, bye Tripitaka.

Impressively, she takes Bai Long Ma and the luggage too, biting through the horse's reins in the process - a concept that AI struggled with.

Thank you for trying, Stable Diffusion AI.

Wukong storms back into the cave, iron rod in hand. Inside, it seems deserted. But he finds a gold incense urn and plaques honouring 'Father' Devaraja Li and 'Brother' Nata/Nezha, the Third Prince. He shrinks his iron rod back to the size of an embroidery needle, takes the plaques, and floats out of there, laughing. He figures the demon has to be the daughter of Devaraja Li, and the younger sister of Third Prince Nezha.

He heads to Heaven and files formal charges before the Emperor, demanding that Devaraja Li and Nezha return Tripitaka. He accuses them of:

He produces the plaque and urn as evidence.

The Jade Emperor grants the order, commanding Gold Star Venus and Wukong to summon Devaraja Li to appear before him.

Ah shoot, typo.

Devaraja Li is not thilled to see Wukong. He's even less happy when he finds out why he's there. He swears he has no daughter who could have done such a thing, and orders his subordinates to tie up Wukong.

Devaraja Li moves to attack Wukong. Venus tries to stop him, but Li swings his sword at Wukong's head.

Nezha parries the blow. Devaraja Li turns pale, because he's not carrying the gold treasure pagoda. What gold treasure pagoda, you ask? We get Cheng'en's version of the whole Nezha backstory, including the most Three Religions way to passive-aggressively separate from your family of origin:

And an explanation for the gold treasure pagoda that comes across as surprisingly Christian-esque to my uneducated mind:

As a side note, I love Accented Cinema's video on Nezha. The different versions of the story over time, and some modern cultural context. I went back and re-watched it after this chapter.

Anyway, Nezha reminds Li that he does indeed have another daughter: a monster-spirit they defeated on behalf of Tathagata hundreds of years ago. Her crime? Eating Tathagata's flowers and candles.

They refrained from killing her, because Tathagata said something poetic I don't understand:

She adopted them as her father and older brother in gratitude for sparing her life. Hence the incense. Which she evidently refrained from eating this time.

This jogs Li's memory of the existence of his daughter, but he still can't remember her name, so Nezha tells him that too. She is Mistress Ground-Rushing, previously known as Golden-Nosed White-Haired Rodent-Spirit and Bisected Guanyin.

I guess that explains the flower eating.

Li realises he's attacked Wukong unfairly and wants to untie him, but Wukong refuses. He rolls around on the floor in a tantrum, insisting that the litigation proceed. He wants Li to answer the Emperor's summons, and he wants the Emperor to see what Li's done to him.

Li begs Venus to talk to Wukong for him. He realises he's going to need a good lawyer-type to mediate this dispute i he's going to get anywhere.

Like any good lawyer, Venus tells his client the truth. He advises Li that Li has actually screwed up and is actually somewhat culpable.

But Li knows Venus has pull with Wukong, and he begs him to use it. So Venus reminds Wukong that he owes him for all the kindness he's shown Wukong in the past:

Wukong is a little huffy, but backs down and lets them untie him.

He still wants to drag Li before the Emperor, so Venus has to talk him down again. He reminds him how long litigation takes, and that one day in Heaven equals one year on earth.

Litigation: side-effects may include mini monks.

Wukong sees the sense in this. He's willing to settle the litigation, in principle. But they have to thrash out the finer points. Venus wants Wukong and Li to go straight to the cave while he, Venus, goes to Heaven to tell the Emperor that the plaintiff Wukong has fled and the case against Li should be dismissed.

Wukong is quite rightly not having that, so Wukong and Venus go to return the decree together, while Li readies his troops to show how willing he is to confront Ground-Rushing and make good. Venus explains the situation to the Emperor and begs him to pardon Li. The Emperor knows the play already and grants the pardon.

Wukong, Li and Li's troops head to the cave, where Li's people and Wukong's people are almost painfully polite with each other. They lead a joint expedition into the cave, noticing its beauty as they systematically search its 300 mile footprint.

It turns out Rushing-Ground and her people are hiding in a sub-cave in one corner:

Ground-Rushing realises she's cornered and surrenders. Nezha orders her and her fiends to be tied up, reproaching her for dragging the family into this mess. Bajie and Sandy want blood, but Li intervenes:

Good for Li and his restraint. Still, it's a wild turnaround from the original charge, which was against Li and Nezha for their neglect:

This chapter left me wondering how to characterise Ground-Rushing. I had a moment where I pictured her like this:

... which I don't think is accurate.

Then I pictured her as being in some kind of GoT-style strategic marriage. Except for immortality, not politics.

Then I thought of her like this, as a woman who astutely forged strategic ties with the house of Li when they first defeated her, by adopting Li and Nezha as her honoured family superiors.

Sure, the plaques gave her away to Wukong. But the bond of kinship is probably also what saved her, her people and her cave from total destruction. You get the sense she's going to get off pretty lightly.

But it's probably none of the above. I think she was just sincerely grateful they spared her life the first time round - although it should be said that capital punishment for eating some flowers and candles seems a bit harsh in the first place.

So this arc ends harmoniously because of groundwork that Venus laid centuries ago out of selfless generosity; because Nezha knows how to handle his dad and uses his influence kindly; because Li is actually fairly benign when he can get past his rashness and holes in his memory; and because of an act of gratitude and loyalty by Ground-Rushing that pays off unexpectedly.

Yeah, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

You know what else I noticed? These past few chapters, it's really annoyed me that the woman went nameless. A lot. But Nezha does finally name her in this chapter and, once he does, things start to turn around.

And our travellers are back off on their journey.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

---

Image credits: The usual spiel. The images above are either AI, or random pictures from the web that I’ve modified, or not modified, or a Frankenstein of both. They are not original. The AI image generation is by Stable Diffusion. The pre-existing images should turn up with reverse googling, but feel free to ask and I’ll dig up sources.

[ryin-silverfish]

Heart and Mind: An Analysis of Tripitaka

I've been wanting to write this since…since I came across some good ol' Tripitaka discourse in the LMK fandom ages ago. Couldn't remember the specifics, but as y'all probably know, it falls under the "Is him an abusive master" and people's strongly worded retort to that question.

On one hand, I dislike the "abusive" take because so often, it is an excuse to reduce a character to an 2D caricature for cheap angst purposes, and both JTTW and its historical context deserve more nuances than that.

On the other hand, I don't agree with some of the defenses either——that Tripitaka is Kind and Wise and The Virtuous Monk, Actually, and people who said otherwise just had their views colored by adaptations, or were ignorant westerners misreading the book.

Because trust me, Chinese readers absolutely have gripes with Tripitaka too, and sass him mercilessly.

We may have a better idea of the historical context, namely, the common usage and acceptance of corporal punishments, but quite a few of us don't think he's a good Buddhist either.

Instead, I'd like to focus on his allegorical role, and how it ultimately forms the basis for my interpretation of his character.

It is commonly acknowledged that each pilgrim represent an aspect of the enlightenment seeker: Monkey is the Mind, Dragon Horse the Will, Pigsy the Desire, Sandy the Determination/Ideation.

Tripitaka is either the enlightenment seeker as a human, or the Heart, the Compassion.

But how can someone represent Compassion when his behaviors don't look all that compassionate, when he seems to care more about what a good Buddhist looks like on paper than in spirit?

How can a compassionate man punish his disciple with a migraine spell and disown him twice, be okay with some violence but not others?

Well, to answer that question, I feel like you have to look at Tripitaka in conjunction with SWK, and what the monkey represents. He is literally the Mind Monkey, the boundless potential of human intellect, and that, by itself, is neutral.

In the word of one of the best poems in JTTW:

"He could be good; he could be bad; present good and evil he could do at will. He'd be an immortal, a Buddha, if he's good; wickedness would cloak him with hair and horn."

To put it simply, SWK is one's wits, one's problem-solving skills, the ability to discern good and evil on a cognitive level.

Whenever Tripitaka, the Compassion, is deceived, it falls to the Mind to see the opponents as they are, and take action to protect the human from harm.

But just as blind compassion without judgement can be exploited by evil, the reverse is true for a mind without compassion, driven solely by their own ambition and whims and practical knowledge.

The Mind knows that robbery is a crime, so these robbers deserve death, but has no idea how disturbing it is for a regular guy to witness six people being brutally murdered in front of him.

The Mind knows that abandoning your wife and family to become a bandit is shameful and unfilial, but cannot comprehend why the bandit's father may not want his son killed for these offenses.

The Mind knows right and wrong, but has trouble seeing the human behind those acts, and why one should care in the first place.

And to see what the Mind looks like without any of Compassion's restraint, one needs to look no further than SWK's "Second Mind", the Six-eared Macaque.

Just like how "Heart" sounds like a lame power for a character, Compassion isn't flashy, nor as useful in a strictly ultilitarian sense. In fact, having compassion makes you vulnerable. It hurts. And unscrupulous people will absolutely use it against you.

So why hold onto your weakness and wallow in it? The world doesn't need another sanctimonious wuss, it needs strong, clever people making hard sacrifices, ruthless, logical decisions! Tough up! Stop caring, and you'll never be hurt again!

Much like a certain crowd who think basic human decency is somehow political propaganda, perhaps, when SEM struck Tripitaka, he was trying to do the same thing.

Kill the embodiment of compassion, the sniveling, useless, fragile human that keeps holding SWK back. Replace him as the true Mind, the one strong enough to break all bonds and seize glory with his own two hands.

But without compassion, without humanity, one is no longer a whole person, and cannot reach enlightenment. In fact, just like how Buddha would only give the True Scripture to Tripitaka, if you are not brave enough to make yourself vulnerable, to suffer and feel other's suffering, you will never transcend it.

At best, you can have some pale imitations of the parts you have willingly shut out from yourself.

And that's what SEM does. He thought he could do it on his own, singlehandedly replace SWK and reap the benefits of enlightenment, but he is no Monkey Awakened to Emptiness.

He is just empty; cut off desires because it is base, cut off determined ideation because it is foolish, cut off compassion because it is weak, cut off the altruism and curiosity and creativity from the mind, and you are left with a grand total of NOTHING.

A shadow of a self, desperately clinging onto external validation and stolen stories, reading the pilgrim's travel paperwork out loud as if that would actually make the journey his.

Tripitaka needs to trust SWK and learn from him, because compassion, much like good intention, doesn't solve problems on its own, and mercy is not the same as enabling harm.

SWK needs his master's guidance, because even at his most selfish and impulsive, he cares, and only by extending that care to others and accepting the vulnerability that comes with it can he truly mature and become awakened to the ultimate truth.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

One last bit of ramble: I feel like there is something to be said about Tripitaka's tendency to trust Pigsy, and how the pursuit of enlightenment is often derailed by worldly desires.

Unlike the demons they encountered, however, Pigsy is not the personification of mental obstacles that must be destroyed, because you cannot destroy bodily needs, nor the very human tendencies to slack off and avoid trouble.

You should stop listening to its advice, sure. Poke fun at it, absolutely. But what Pigsy represents is part of the human condition, just like every other pilgrim, and also something one must make peace with.

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 82: courtesy, caves and peach politics

Just a warning - this post is long, even by my standards. But it's too much of a pain to go back and split this into a bunch of smaller posts. All I can say is sorry, and good luck attempting to read this.

Bajie goes scouting out the mountain by himself. He sees two women bailing water. He realises they are demons because... their hairstyle is way out of fashion. Let that be a lesson to all: don't fall behind on what's in, because otherwise you're an actual monster.

He decides to greet them with, "Monstrous fiends!", and is then surprised when they take offence and whack him on the head repeatedly.

He runs crying to Wukong. When Wukong hears how Bajie spoke to them, he laughs and isn't surprised that they whacked him. He gives Bajie a rundown on the importance of courtesy - not because other people have inherent worth and should be treated with dignity, but because that's the best way to get what they want from them. Despite his self-serving attitude, part of his lecture is beautiful and poetic:

Bajie tries again, this time more politely. He finds out that the women are getting water because their mistress is entertaining a monk she's just abducted. She's going to marry him that evening.

They watch the water women return home. Thus they find Mount Void-Entrapping, Bottomless Cave. It sounds extraordinary, with a terraced tower above ground, in front of a 10 square mile boulder, in the centre of which is a barrel-sized hole: the entrance to the Cave, worn smooth from use.

Now, please do not attempt any of the following cave-diving or cave-exploration stuff. A lot of people die doing it.

With that said, I picture the entrance somewhat like these:

But closer to these dimensions:

Wukong announces that he will go in and drive the demon out. Bajie and Sandy will wait at the entrance and block off the demon's escape. They will defeat the demon, and then be able to rescue Tripitaka.

Wukong rides colourful auspicious airs down the hole.*

Down the bottom is a bright place with its own sunlight, trees and breezes.

How did Cheng'en know? Cos he's not wrong. In looking for images for this post, I came across a BBC video about real-life cave Hang Son Doong in Vietnam, an extraordinary place with cave pearls, rocks that grow towards the light and - as Cheng'en seemed to anticipate - its own weather system, with its own winds and rains.

Anyway. Wukong decides to go incognito and transforms into a fly.

He finds the demon, who looks more beautiful than ever. Poetry ensues.

Ok, just kidding. Sorry, there's only so much poetry I can take about beautiful demons.**

Wukong-as-fly finds Tripitaka in a room shuttered with red, translucent paper on top and opaque paper on the bottom. He crashes right through the walls.

Wukong susses out whether Tripitaka is wavering in the face of the demon's sexiness. He's not, and he's pissed off that Wukong is shit-testing him.

Wukong says it's hard to find the way out of the cave, so he devises a rescue plan. When the demon tries to drink with Tripitaka, Tripitaka must play along. But when he pours a drink for her, he should do it quickly, so it makes bubbles. Wukong will hide in the bubbles, sneak into her stomach and kill her. It's very chapter 59.

Tripitaka is hesitant about this brutality. Wukong chastises his excessive, impractical "virtue".

Agreed, Wukong.

That said, I've got sympathy for Tripitaka here too. Wukong did sound a little too willing to be gruesomely violent there.

Enter the demon. There's the usual stuff about her being beautiful and seductive, and him playing along externally, but being filled with horror and resistance inside, and completely unmoved by lust.

Wukong wonders whether Tripitaka will crack. Notably, he wonders with a smile, not with anxiety.

He's not anxiously biting his nails, going, "Oh, golly gosh, I do hope he makes it. If only I could do something to prop him up!" No. Wukong is mercilessly happy to see Tripitaka self-destruct, if that's how it goes. If Tripitaka is going to walk this spiritual path, he's got to be totally committed. There's no point in anyone helping him fake his way past a wavering sense of conviction.

It looks like things are going to plan with the wine and the bubbles. Tripitaka prays along the way that the wine is dietary enough for him to drink. But when Tripitaka gives the demon her frothy cup, she pauses to make a toast and the bubbles die away. She sees the insect (Wukong) and flicks it out of the wine. Plot thwarted.

Wukong loses the plot, transforms into a hawk, smashes the furniture, crockery and food, and GTFOs. Subtle, Wukong.

The demon is shaken up and asks where the hawk came from. Tripitaka pretends he has no idea. The demon's staff are upset about the ruined dietary food. The demon brushes it off and tells them to prepare other wine and food - whether it's dietary or not. Then they'll be married.

Wukong visits Bajie and Sandy at the cave entrance to give them an update. Then he goes back in, disguised as a fly again.

Tripitaka is crying because now he's doomed to have to eat non-dietary food on top of having to get married and have sex with this demon.

But Wukong has another plan. Tripitaka will get the demon to take him for a walk in the peach garden. Wukong will transform into a red peach. Tripitaka will pluck 'it'. The demon is bound to pluck one too. Tripitaka will swap peaches with her, and the demon will eat Wukong the peach, at which point he will kill her from the inside.

He says he can't just fight her the normal way, because the cave is too hard to get in and out of. If he tries, the whole fienddom will attack him and he'll be bogged down.

Tripitaka and the demon head to the peach orchard. They each pick a peach. Tripitaka gallantly offers to give the demon his nice red one (Wukong) in exchange for her green one. She seems touched, thinking to herself what a lovely husband he's shaping up to be.

She sounds pretty sincere and pretty interested in a healthy marriage - aexcept that she abducted him.

But if we're going to look at her perspective, can I just pause and say, okay, demon lady. I know he's cute. And I know he just offered to give you his nice, ripe peach. But can we just circle back and remember that this is the guy who, just one chapter ago, talked to a roomful of men about where to house you like you were an object? Like you weren't even in the room? When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Now he's breadcrumbing you with fruit from your own orchard and you swoon for him? Also, if you wanted a red peach, why did you pick a green one? Talk about internalised sexism! Treat yourself like you're worth something! When you pick a peach for yourself, pick a nice, ripe one! They're your peaches, after all! When you treat yourself badly, you set the bar so low that any dipshit with a cassock can waltz in and sweep you off your feet. With your own produce. Come on.

I mean, I guess it was kind of sweet.

If it hadn't all been a ploy.

Before she can even eat the peach (Wukong), Wukong disappears down her throat. The demon is understandably startled, and asks Tripitaka what happened. He switches from breadcrumbing to gaslighting:

It's hilarious, albeit messed up. Also, does this mean Tripitaka has a sense of humour after all? Cos this is pretty deadpan.

Tripitaka and Wukong break it to her that Wukong is in her stomach and she'd better let Tripitaka out if she wants to live.

She starts waxing lyrical about how she thought that she and Tripitaka were meant to be, but sees it isn't so. Wukong thinks she's trying to guilt trip Tripitaka, and that he might actually cave this time. Whereas he smugly left Tripitaka to fend for himself against lust, Wukong is taking no risks this time. He starts beating her up from the inside before Tripitaka can cave to his gullible, 'compassionate' nature.

So apparently you have to stand strong against lust if you want to make good with Buddha, but you can be wobbly on people-pleasing and still make it with a little help from your friends.

Wukong quickly subdues her: so much so that he thinks she's dead. But she isn't. So he demands that she personally escort Tripitaka out of the cave. In a refreshing reversal of gender roles, she gives him a piggyback.

I like to think of it as her doing the pre-wedding bridal carrying thing in reverse. Like her way of saying, "CTL + Z! CTL + Z!"

When they reach the entrance, they hear clanging. It's Bajie and Sandy. Tripitaka calls out to them. They remove their muckrake and staff from the entrance, and the demon carries Tripitaka outside.

And that's where they leave us for this week.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

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*Nothing to do with jTTW, but while we're on that Alice in Wonderland GIF, according to Nicola Twilley in Frostbite, in the 1700s there was a huge vogue for underground ice cellars in Britain. In the days long before fridges and freezers (p47-8, emphasis added):

frozen water harvested in the winter could be stored until summer. ... To this day, ice wells are regularly rediscovered by developers in London as they attempt to sink pilings or excavate basements into unexpectedly hollow earth. In rural areas, according to Bruce Walker, an expert in Scottish vernacular architecture, the entrances to subterranean icehouses, which were typically built at a distance from any other structure and seemed to open directly into the earth, are likely responsible for many of Britain’s legends of secret tunnels and hobbit-like creatures.

**I thought about whether this GIF was ok or if it was problematic in terms of representing cross-dressers. The character appears to be a cross-dresser, not a trans woman. I felt it was okay in the context of the movie it comes from, namely Flirting Scholar, but I get it if people feel otherwise.

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 81: JTTW, TwoSet, slippers and the literal demonisation of women

I wrote this some months ago. My perspective has shifted a bit since then. So has my relationship with YouTube, the internet and media generally. But I figured I might as well post it anyway.

So, chapter 81.

Tripitaka & co are now at a monastery, and this woman they ‘rescued’ from the forest is still in tow. Half the monastery crowds into Tripitaka & co’s room, ostensibly so the abbot can talk to him, but mostly to get a glance of the woman. (Oooooh, a WOMAN!)

I imagine it a lot like this:

At first I thought that was just a funny moment thrown in for relief. Later I realised, maybe this is the point of the whole chapter: that they’re insincere in their Buddhism, especially as far as lust goes. They rush to ogle this woman at the first opportunity.

The abbot awkwardly hints that Tripitaka & co shouldn’t have a woman sleeping in their room. Tripitaka emphasises that in no way were they planning to have sex with her. The abbot is free to house her somewhere else. In other words, Tripitaka & co are the epitome of chastity.

They are not, however, the epitome of feminism. As you can see, they talk about her like she’s not even in the room. It doesn’t occur to them to, you know, include her in the conversation. To see what she wants to do. To them, she’s a mere object by which they can demonstrate their saintliness: their transcendence of lust; their compassion in not leaving her for dead.

There’s then an interlude where Tripitaka thinks he’s dying. Actually, the Buddha is just bitch-slapping him with some kind of three-day flu as payback for falling asleep during his lecture back when. Bajie figures that if the Buddha is that pissed off with Tripitaka, then Bajie must be in for a lot worse. But Wukong breaks it to him that Bajie is too much of a nobody for the Buddha to bother smiting him.

Meanwhile, the demon woman ‘disappears’ for a few days. Monks start disappearing too. Wukong goes undercover to investigate, disguised as a teenage monk.

The demon woman promptly appears and, disturbingly, tries to seduce said teenage-looking Wukong for her nefarious demon purposes. Wukong emphatically resists seduction and they start fighting.

They’re pretty evenly matched, but Wukong starts prevailing, so she runs and Wukong chases. When he almost catches her, she rips a flower slipper off her foot, transforms it into an imitation of herself, and leaves Wukong to fight it.

It’s a little bit like this:

Except this:

Doing this:

Okay, it's nothing like that. Her shoe actually transforms into a clone of her and fights the hell out of Wukong. But come on, who doesn't want to see some slipper smackdown.

It takes Wukong a while to prevail against the demon’s footwear. When he does, it turns back into a shoe, and he realises he’s been had.

Can we pause for a moment to acknowledge how badass that is compared to this?

Actually, that GIF makes the bewitched shoe look pretty frightened and cowed, running away from Wukong at the end there. The book version sounds a look more badass. But anyway. Shoe-as-strategic-defence vs shoe-as-prince-pickup-material.

Needless to say, the demon has abducted Tripitaka while Wukong was distracted, and disappeared off somewhere. When Wukong realises what has happened, he’s royally pissed.

He also realises that the demon must have been the one ‘disappearing’ the monks – that the monks must have been only too happy to be seduced, and that’s how she got them.

He, Bajie and Sandy set off in search of Tripitaka. They’re told he’s in Bottomless Cave within Void-Entrapping Mountain. When they reach the mountain, Wukong sends Bajie to scout of the situation while he and Bajie wait behind.

And that’s where the author leaves us in this chapter.

I do want to throw in a few bonus links, though. I have pulled together some quality scholarship for you. And by scholarship, I mean a scattering of TwoSet videos with tenuous links to the theme of demonisation of women.

This is going to be unbearably tedious unless you fit the intersection of this Venn diagram:

(Credit to this Github team for the XKCD font – and of course to XKCD for being XKCD.)

Please don't freak out if you're a TwoSetter. I’m not saying that TwoSet or JTTW are doing anything particularly heinous. I just want to gently raise a particular perspective on these videos without judging them too harshly. It’s easy to get sucked into unhelpfully divisive thinking, and I don’t want to do that.

With that, here are some links for your mild entertainment and reflection. They’re on the theme of women as threats to bromances and men’s ambitions. The third video is harder to timestamp, because the relevant excerpts are in three separate places. It's one of those slipper videos GIFed above.

If we’re going to talk about men keeping their shit together in a world where women exist, I prefer Xue Mo’s tone in the following passage. I don’t know if he’s representative of Chinese Buddhist voices more broadly – I’m too ignorant about such things – but at least he’s one voice. In The World is a Reflection of the Mind, he says (on p36 of the English edition, in the chapter What Do People Live For?):

… I always say to students that there is no failure, there is only giving up. I did not have natural talent, and I was not hardworking. I just faced in a certain direction, and every day I traveled the road I had to travel, without stopping, without wandering off, without being deceived, and finally I woke up [spiritually]. Sometimes there would be a girl who beckoned to me, and I could exchange a few words with her, but I did not forget the goal of my quest and run off after her. This was because I clearly knew that she would lead me toward another road. When money beckoned me, I also would not go. I always affirmed my own direction.

Fairly neutral. No demonisation; no hostility. No implication that women are inherently threatening, destructive forces. No suggestion that women need to be rebuffed, defied or avoided aggressively.

There is also this TwoSet skit. It portrays the woman as (1) a romantic object and (2) something to be used in the pursuit of a man’s career ambitions. I found it depressing on multiple levels. But in fairness to them, they’re not demonising her.

We have seen TwoSet take instruction from a talented female violinist before. Good on them for that. It’s an adorable video. I still have reservations about it, but I'll leave you to form your own impressions.

For contrast, here’s a video in which Brett takes feedback from a grown man. That part goes from about 12:31 to 13:46.

Now, just in case any TwoSetters out there stumble on this post and feel triggered, I will say this. I like TwoSet. I wouldn’t know so many of their videos if I didn’t. I also realise they tend to pout about feedback. Sometimes they seem to want to have it both ways: to make whatever content they want without anybody being allowed to express criticism. I love a lot about them, but I don’t agree with that. They are full grown adults who have chosen a very public career. They have generated a lot of money and status out of it. There is a place for feedback and criticism. Criticism can even help strengthen bonds between content-maker and audience by keeping the gates of communication open, if the content-maker is open to hearing sincere feedback. So, with love, I’m standing by this.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 80: Tripitaka kids himself about lust, and engages in colorism

This chapter begins in the typical way: Tripitaka is stressing and Wukong is admonishing him for it. On this occasion, Tripitaka is stressing because he sees a mountain ahead, and Wukong is pointing out that it’s ridiculous for a seasoned traveller to panic and think that there might be no road through the mountain. Tripitaka and Bajie natter about whether the mountain is likely to be safe or not.

As is so often the case, the scenery is gorgeous and we get a beautiful poem out of it.

But Tripitaka hears a bird singing and feels homesick. Tripitaka, Wukong and Bajie start bickering again, this time about how much further it is to the Western Heaven and whether they’ll ever get there.

They enter a dark pine forest. Tripitaka is - you guessed it - scared. And Wukong - you guessed it - admonishes him for it.

They stop for a meal break. As Wukong soars into the air on his way to beg food, he looks back. He sees that the pine forest is “veiled by hallowed clouds and auspicious mists” emanating from Tripitaka, and he has a bit of a moment. He’s overcome with feeling about how Tripitaka is really the incarnation of Elder Gold Cicada, “a good man who has practiced austerities for ten incarnations”. He softens a bit and reflects that surely things will turn out well for him, Wukong, too, after he helps Tripitaka complete his journey.

But a dark cloud begins to envelop Tripitaka’s hallowed ones.

Back in the forest, Tripitaka finds a woman in distress - really a monster, of course, unknown to Tripitaka. As is typical for JTTW, this woman demon is hot. On this occasion, she also seems to be immobilised in an unnecessarily fetishy way. Sigh.

There’s the usual sob story from said hottie, and the usual pattern of Tripitaka falling for it. He gets Bajie to start freeing the demon.

Wukong returns, stops Bajie, and tries to tell Tripitaka that, yes, this hot woman is actually a demon trying to eat his flesh. Again.

And what do you know - Tripitaka actually listens. The party moves on, leaving the demon behind them.

But the demon gives it another go: she sends her voice gently into Tripitaka’s ears, carried on the breeze. She plays to his number one weakness: his gullible, pain-in-the-ass, stubborn tendency to do exactly the wrong thing in the name of “virtue”.

“If you a living human passed by and refused to free,

What Buddha or scriptures could such blindness hope to see?”

she whispers over the breeze.

And that’s all it takes: Tripitaka orders them to all go back and rescue her.

Wukong calls exactly like it is:

“Master… when you want to do good, there’s no drug in the world that can cure you!”

Yeah. This is exactly Tripitaka’s problem, and a huge reason why I love JTTW so much. It’s not a common theme - at least not in the mostly westernised, Christianity-centric media I’ve grown up with. There’s very little spiritually-oriented media on the theme of, “Don’t be such a gullible nuisance, you “virtue”-obsessed twat.” In fact, a lot of media in our Christianity-centric culture seems to promote the message, “Be as naive, idiotic and gullible as possible - and you’ll be endlessly rewarded!” It’s like doing good deeds is virtuous, but being an idiotic, gullible fool who enables evil-doers and gets themselves and others trampled in the process is DOUBLY virtuous. The tighter you close your eyes, the better. The more you are taken advantage of - when you could easily have seen through the bullshit - the better. You got yourself scammed, and now your family and kids have no money? Good on you. Straight to heaven. You got your heart broken when it was obvious that the person was a heartbreaker - some blatant womaniser or fuckboi? Good on you. You’ll be rewarded for your idiocy. Put your hands over your ears and eyes, offer yourself up as a scam victim, and you’ll be rewarded. A lot. You will inherit the kingdom, my friend. Except not, actually. How refreshing to see JTTW call this out as bullshit.

In case anyone's triggered, to be clear, please be assured - I'm not saying that Christianity itself promotes such an attitude. I'm saying that there seems to be a theme in western culture of promoting that attitude, and perhaps attributing it to Christianity, or interpreting Christian culture in that way. Whether that is accurate or not I have no idea: I'm not a theologian. I'm not trying to make a point about religion here. I'm just talking about themes floating around society generally.

But I digress. Back to Tripitaka and his rescue.

Wukong lets it go. He lets Tripitaka go ahead with the rescue. But with a few well-placed comments, he activates everybody’s fears of “hot woman cooties” and “what will people think”, until nobody wants to be near her. It’s bizarre, because apparently these people are trying to be incredibly spiritual, yet they seem to care rather a lot about whether random strangers will think maybe they’ve been having sex with this woman. Why should they care? The only thing that matters is preserving their ‘original yang’ and not getting eaten, right? Not town gossip. Also, isn’t it kind of wrong to treat somebody like a leper just because of their gender and looks?

Also - presumably, they’re saying all of this in front of said demon, which just seems rude.

In any event, they decide to transport the hot leper to the closest human residence, so they can get her off their hands as quickly as possible.

They find what appears to be a monastery or temple, but on closer inspection, it appears to be decrepit and falling apart. Tripitaka has a meltdown in front of a giant bronze bell, and cries out to it with an angsty poem. A temple worker notices him and responds.

This is where we get an ugly insight into Tripitaka. You will of course remember that Tripitaka just found some super hot, seemingly vulnerable woman in the forest and decided that he must save her - totally just because she is a human being who needs help, and not at all because he’s a sucker for the typical Sexy Rescue fantasy. You will also remember that Tripitaka wanted to rescue her even though he’d already conceded that she was probably a demon. How gracious of him.

Well, this worker isn’t hot. He’s “ugly and dark”.

So how does Tripitaka respond?

He’s alarmed, suspicious, and instantly accuses this “ugly and dark” person of being “some sort of goblin or fiend”.

So apparently, for Tripitaka:

Demon + hot = we should be compassionate and rescue them anyway, cos we're, like, Buddhist and stuff.

Human + ugly + dark = probably a demon. We should be rude and hostile immediately.

Frankly, the temple worker could have been forgiven for asking Tripitaka to leave for this display of colorism and general assholery. Instead, he brings him inside and introduces him to the abbot.

There’s an interesting little interaction where Tripitaka explains the mission he’s on; but the abbott thinks he’s just telling tales to sound super virtuous, and tells him he should be more honest as a Buddhist. They soon clear it up, and the abbott sends two young lamas outside to bring in Wukong & co.

This leads to another little episode about looks. The young lamas don’t register that Wukong, Bajie and Sha Monk are Tripitaka’s disciples: because of their ugliness, they assume that they're fiends, and go back inside without speaking to them. A number of interesting comments about looks ensue:

It’s refreshing to see this “don’t judge a book by its cover” sort of theme dealt with without after-school special vibes; without bristling self-righteousness; and without angst. I’m not saying that this approach is better or worse. I have mixed feelings about it. It’s just refreshing to see someone play out another perspective.

And that’s where we’re left waiting til next time.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 60: In which Wukong thinks he's a lot more of a stud than he is

Alright. Let's get this barf-fest of a chapter over with.

It starts out fine. The mysterious local spirit from last chapter tells Wukong that the Mountain of Fire is, in fact, Wukong's fault.

He also tells him that the only way to get the palm-leaf fan is through Bull Demon King (BDK).

This begins an entire chapter of misogynistic fan service. There's misogyny by Wukong to Princess Jade Countenance (PJC); from BDK to PJC; from Wukong to Princess Iron Fan; and from BDK to Princess Iron Fan.

Very little happens along the way. The chapter is almost entirely an excuse to have scene after scene of gratuitous misogyny.

If you cut out some of the more egregious stuff, the plot boils down to this:

PJC, a wealthy heiress, has taken in BDK as a toy boy. (There's a thin pretext that she paired up with him because his magical powers could help protect her estate, but frankly with her wealth I imagine she could hire any number of mages - like those parents who hired a string of mages to try to rescue their daughter from Bajie. So I suspect she just says that to soothe his ego, so he doesn't just feel like a pretty face.) He's still married in theory, but he hasn't looked back since moving in with PJC and has consistently been paying alimony to Iron Fan.

Wukong runs into PJC on the mountainside. Wukong decides to physically attack her. PJC, being quick on the uptake and a survivor, decides this would be a good time to GTFO.

Wukong chases her as she runs back home. Hence he finds Cloud-Touching Cave, where BDK is.

BDK comes out, and he squares off with Wukong. BDK agrees to give him the fan if Wukong can best him three times in a fight, but gets called away to a banquet after just one round. He jumps on a water-repellent golden-eyed beast and heads to the banquet.

Yes, water-repellent.

Wukong stalks him to another mountain, where he loses track of him near Green Wave Lagoon. He transforms into a crab and sinks to the bottom.

Lo and behold, there is the water-repellent golden-eyed beast - and the banquet.

It's a beautiful sight:

Interestingly, footnote 9 explains that 'young boys' is 'malang',

which has multiple layers of significance here. One is that 'malang':

I couldn't find Yu's version of the story, but I found a video version and transcript.

Anyway. Generations of dragon spirits are hosting BDK as the guest of honour.

Wukong quickly proves that he is no James Bond. There is nothing clever about his attempt to infiltrate the banquet. He just walks right in, albeit in crab form.

He's seized immediately and threatened with death, but he pleads that he's just an ignorant bumpkin crab who didn't mean to cause any trouble. They decide to spare him and just kick him out.

Wukong figures that if he steals the water-repellent golden-eyed beast, it will help him to pass himself off as BDK, and he can trick Princess Iron Fan into handing over the fan.

He turns up at Iron Fan's place, riding the beast, and greets her disguised as BDK. Apart from the disguise, Wukong is, once again, incredibly bad at espionage. He just straight up asks her:

Subtle.

Iron Fan spits the tiny fan out of her mouth, where she's been hiding it, and gives it to him.

Wukong stares at the fan really blatantly: so much so that Iron Fan asks him what's up. It's like he isn't even trying to maintain cover at this point, because he straight up asks how such a small fan is meant to extinguish 800 miles of flames.

Iron Fan calls him out on how bizarre this question is, but answers anyway:

With this, Wukong reveals his true identity, just to spite her.

He runs off with the fan, which he enlarges to 12 feet, and then can't shrink again.

The real BDK arrives at Princess Iron Fan's place, but too late. He borrows Princess Iron Fan's swords and goes after Wukong.

And that's it for this chapter!

So why did I say Wukong thinks he's more of a stud than he is? Well, I cut that out along with most of the misogyny. Half the misogyny involved scenes where rich, attractive, powerful women threw themselves at men in highly implausible circumstances. I'm not even going to get into the other half. If you've read chapter 60 for yourself, all I can say is, yeah right, boys. In your dreams.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

---

Image credits: The usual spiel. The images above are random pictures/videos from the web, some modified, some not. They are not original. Many of these are from the 1986 version of Journey to the West. The pre-existing images should turn up with reverse googling or have links embedded, but feel free to ask and I’ll dig up sources.

[here4tripitaka]

To read or not to read?

Alright. Well, here I am again.

I stopped writing at chapter 60 because of the level of misogyny in JTTW. Don't get me wrong - I wasn't expecting a work of literature this old to be a shining example of respect and equality. But the level of misogyny I've seen in the book so far has been well beyond what I expected, and smuttier. Women seem to feature mostly as borderline porno plot points.

I'm still not sure that I want to subject my brain to a weekly drip-feed of this level of sexism. Also, I'm not exposed to many other sources of Chinese culture on a regular basis, and I really don't want something this chauvinistic to be my main impression of Chinese culture week after week.

Nor do I want to lose time being reactive and calling out the chauvinism week after week. Sure, there can be a point to dissecting stuff and calling it out. But I don't want to it to chew up too much of my time or energy. Besides, if all I wanted to do is to spend my life reacting to pigs, I'd hardly need to read JTTW.

So why am I back? Well, the universe seemed to be calling me back to it. And by 'universe', I mean 'social media'. Ie I saw this and this.

In all seriousness, though, I guess JTTW just kept tickling at the back of my mind. My original reasons for wanting to read it still stand. I want to learn more about Chinese culture, and JTTW is so ubiquitous. And, at the risk of stating the obvious, JTTW is awesome. I connect with it in a way that I just haven't with Romance of the Three Kingdoms (I'm not big into battles or politics) or The Water Margin (which I can see myself loving; it's just not JTTW).

I figure I'll take it chapter by chapter and see if I can engage with it without doing collateral damage to my brain. I doubt it, but let's see.

Failing that, I'll sit back and see what John Zhu does with it. I'm hoping he'll provide a bit of a buffer against the more misogynistic aspects of the book while still providing a fairly traditional account of it.

Alright. I'd better get reading and writing.

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 60: Misogyny triumphs; something something Flaming Mountain

Well, this chapter was pretty much a misogynist’s fantasy.

I’m not going to spell it out. I trust that everyone here has the capacity to see it for themselves if they want to. So let me express my feelings about this chapter thus:

If you need some brain bleach after that chapter, may I recommend one of Jung Chang’s books, or maybe watching a documentary about Nushu, the secret written language created by Chinese women for women only.

Baaaaai! See you next week!

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

—

Image credits: The usual spiel. The images above are either AI, or random pictures from the web, or a Frankenstein of both; some modified, some not. They are not original. The pre-existing images should turn up with reverse googling or have links embedded, but feel free to ask and I’ll dig up sources.

[blublublubnate]

A little experiment with new brush👁️👁️

[here4tripitaka]

Ch 59: Yum cha, fire and literal bubble tea

This chapter was just all-round beautiful. Atmospheric, poetic, visually vivid and full of music - although sometimes also uncomfortably realistic (unnaturally hot weather; mountain fires).

The red mountain made me think of landscapes I’ve seen. The idea of drums and bugles saving people from the sound of the sizzling sun sinking into the sea made me think of the din of musical instruments at Chinese New Year. The dragons in the streams and the paulownia trees were simply beautiful.

And the music! There is so much music. Yu’s footnotes say that three of the poems are set to pre-existing Chinese tunes. I tried to dig them up. They’re at the bottom of this post, for anyone interested.

Well, let’s begin. As we know, the travellers come upon a strangely sweltering part of the landscape. Bajie thinks they must be at the Edge of Heaven, but Wukong points out they can’t possibly have travelled that far. They approach the house of a local man, introduced to us through the ‘Not Quite’ poem.

I loved this poem. It reminded me a little of the Phantom Tollbooth or of Lewis Carroll. (Of course, that may well be because I don’t know much, if any, non-western poetry or literature with which to compare it. Do let me know if you know any Tollbooth-esque literature or poetry from other cultures.)

He tells them they’re at the foot of the Mountain of Flames.

I didn’t realise the flaming mountains were a real land feature in China - minus the pyrotechnics. Apparently travellers along the Silk Road avoided them. The soil temperature has been estimated at 66.8°C (152.2°F). (Thanks Wikipedia.)

Tripitaka is overwhelmed at the mere thought of the heat. He turns pale and falls silent - right back to his old ways:

Wukong, being the ADHD kid that he is, gets distracted by a vendor with a cart, and goes to buy rice pudding with a hair-turned-copper-coin.

I don’t know which kind of rice pudding this means, but it sounds delicious. Maybe this?

Or this?

But really I’m just thinking of this - which has nothing to do with rice or pudding, but everything to do with me getting excited when a Chinese food cart rolls around:

Wukong calls bullshit on the place being hot all year round. He figures if they can make rice flour for rice pudding, there have to be both hot and cool seasons.

And so they find out about Immortal/Princess Iron Fan, whose fan can extinguish the fires and even bring rain.

Cut to the woodcutter on Jade Cloud Mountain, who has a real chip on his shoulder about calling her ‘immortal’:

The 'Raksasi' thing may or may not be a jerk move, because apparently it just means ‘female demon’:

Wukong gets nervous about having to confront another angry relative of Red Boy, and the woodcutter schools him on how he should never be nervous as a Buddhist:

Even when Wukong explains his bind, the woodcutter stands by it:

I somehow love the total lack of strategy here. “Okay. You have every reason to think that this demon will refuse to give you what you want. Just disregard that entirely, and go in there confidently.”

Wukong finds Iron Fan, gets his ass kicked by her, and takes back some of the condescending thoughts he’d had about her as a woman fighter. We go from this:

To this:

He’s bailed out by Bodhisattva Lingji, who conveniently has a Wind-Arresting Elixir. Wukong returns to unwarranted pride in his manhood in no time:

I mean, the only reason he can withstand the wind is that a woman was nice and gave him an elixir. So I'm not sure what it has to do with him being a man.

He sneaks into Iron Fan’s stomach via her tea:

In the ultimate Trojan Horse move, he prods her insides til it hurts. I must not have been the only one thinking of yum cha when the rice pudding came up, because the dim sum theme continues:

Iron-Fan puts on a good pretence of panicking and surrendering, but keeps her cool. She gives Wukong a fake iron fan. He doesn’t realise until he’s dragged the whole of Team Tripitaka up the Mountain of Flames and made the fire worse.

Tripitaka cries.

Ah, dear Tripitaka. He wants those scriptures. He wants them SO MUCH. And if he can’t get them, his heart is going to break.

Meanwhile, Bajie is just laughing his ass off because Wukong lost all the hair from his thighs in the fire.

The guys are at a bit of a loss. The only way to the west is to pass the Mountain of Fire, but nobody really knows what to do next. Clearly Wukong is no longer feeling so confident about kicking Iron Fan’s ass, cos he’s not even talking about trying a third time.

While they’re kicking around, they’re approached by a mysterious man, who turns out to be the spirit of the Mountain of Flames. He tips them off about what to do next.

And that’s it for this week. I’m excited for the next chapter, because I came across some ceramic art online that gave me some possible hints about next week. I’ll refrain from posting it, but we’ll see next week.

Music

As promised! The music for the three poems.

#1 To the tune of the Wind in the Pines

《風入松歌》 Feng Ru Song Ge

Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOr1-ZeVGvM

About the music: https://silkqin.com/02qnpu/10tgyy/tg28frsg.htm

#2 To the tune of Barbarian Bodhisattvas

Probably this music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1jmF5zg9yI

#3 To the tune of Moon Over West River

Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGMkxd8RW5o

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

—

Image credits: The usual spiel. The images above are either AI, or random pictures from the web, or a Frankenstein of both; some modified, some not. They are not original. The pre-existing images should turn up with reverse googling or have links embedded, but feel free to ask and I’ll dig up sources.

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 58: Wukong chooses good over evil. By killing somebody.

Well, this chapter explained a lot. I’m finally up to speed with you all - the Six-Eared Macaque was Wukong’s alter ego. Now that I know, I’m seeing the last few chapters differently. So I want to circle back to this from last chapter:

Look, we’ve all had bad experiences with team work. I’m sure we’ve all had times when we’ve wanted to spit the dummy and just do the whole thing ourselves. So we can take all the credit, which we totally deserve… maybe. But apparently that is not the solution.

It is interesting that the macaque is killed, not just subdued. Not only is it killed, the entire species is permanently eradicated:

That is, Wukong’s decision to commit to ‘good’ is permanent; even irreversible. That is a deep level of commitment. It’s very different from the idea of having to fight temptation constantly - having to re-commit to choosing good every day, many times each day.

In other words, I was thinking this:

Whereas Wukong was thinking this:

I guess he’s got a point. If you’re ever going to reach true enlightenment, I guess you’ve got to quit your earthly bullshit once and for all.

So I guess it’s kind of like this:

And then you’re Gryffindor forever, no further effort required to stay away from the dark side. HOORAY! Except I think Wukong would be more like:

Interestingly, Tathagata’s description of the Six-Eared Macaque doesn’t make him sound inherently evil:

The footnote is cool:

Brave’s AI had a wildly different take on that saying:

I mean, Yu would know better than random AI, obviously. But the AI answer did make me curious. Alas, the search results seemed to have nothing to do with it.

Anyway, Wukong’s lack of sentimentality in killing the macaque is interesting. So is his reproach to Tathagata when Tathagata seems horrified:

Perhaps Wukong is right: perhaps bad traits within oneself should be squelched unflinchingly, without a backward glance. Perhaps compassion is an inappropriate reaction there, just as Tripitaka’s “compassion” is misplaced a lot of the time.

Still, I’m surprised that nobody punishes him or says he’s out of line for telling Tathagata of all beings what to do. Seems pretty cheeky.

The conflict between Wukong and Tripitaka is resolved by Tathagata and Guanyin telling Wukong and Tripitaka to pull their heads in. Tripitaka obeys without hesitation. I kind of love this about him.

Tripitaka and Wukong really are opposites in this way. Wukong is all backtalk, defiance and autonomy. Tripitaka is obedience and reverent submission personified.

Anyway, this results in everyone being best buds again:

Because no one needs to actually talk through their differences or resolve their feelings about, you know, whether it’s okay to murder people or not. They just need to be told by their superiors to get over it.

And now, in no particular order, honourable mentions from this week:

I loved the bureaucratic hand-writing at the Mountain of Perpetual Shade. “I’m not sure how to deal with this. Let me call my manager. Let me call ALL the managers!”

That moment where you want to be nice to your guests, cos they seem really fancy. But you also want them to leave before they smash up the furniture:

Flower showers!

These were referenced in in chapter 52, too:

I wish I knew what Yu was talking about. Even my best googling returns nothing. But it sure does sound pretty!

Last up, it just sank in that Guanyin has a cockatoo:

TIL cockatoos are not just Australian. And that Indonesian white cockatoos look much more regal than their Australian sulphur-crested cousins. 

Apparently:

They were quite popular in China during the Tang dynasty, a fact which in turn influenced the depictions of Guan Yin with a white parrot. The Fourth Crusade was also sealed between Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the Sultan of Babylon in 1229 with a gift of a white cockatoo.

Speaking of all things nature, did anyone notice that the macaque turned into a bee when it tried to escape? Alas, the macaque’s bee clearly wasn’t as impressive as Wukong’s bee transformation at the Scorpion Demon’s lair, because the macaque’s bee doesn’t get any poetry. Let’s honour it with this picture instead.

RIP, Evil Wukong!

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

---

Image credits: The usual spiel. The images above are either AI, or random pictures from the web, or a Frankenstein of both; some modified, some not. They are not original. The pre-existing images should turn up with reverse googling or have links embedded, but feel free to ask and I’ll dig up sources.

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 57: Opposite Day Tripitaka gets violent; Wukong cries; Sandy goes nuclear

The one where Tripitaka dies. Except not.

This week I’m going to jump around a bit more. Let's get into it.

Tripitaka and Wukong

Last week I was deeply unimpressed with Tripitaka and sympathetic to Wukong. This week it’s the opposite. Tripitaka gets 10/10 from me for the way he handles things, whereas I’m pretty unimpressed with Wukong for (1) hitting Tripitaka and (2) being an insincere git who’s trying to get back in with Tripitaka for all the wrong reasons.

It’s not that he’s realised he was wrong to kill all those people; not that he misses Tripitaka; not that he’s worried Tripitaka won’t be able to complete the journey without him. No, he’s just too embarrassed to go home with his tail between his legs:

Have you ever had an ex who promised to change that thing you broke up with them over - only to go right back to their old ways once you agreed to get back together? Well, Wukong is the platonic version of that:

Tripitaka, to his credit, is not fooled:

Is this really the same guy who was fooled three times by Lady White Bone - and so many others? I think our boy is growing up.

This is one of my favourite themes in JTTW - this stuff about gullibility being a moral shortcoming. I mean, I don’t actually know whether Wukong is sincere here. But it doesn’t seem like it.

I’m still against the violence - the band-tightening spell. But I have more sympathy for Tripitaka this time, because he’s made it very clear he wants Wukong gone. BOUNDARIES, WUKONG. And Tripitaka seems much more calm and collected, so it doesn’t seem spiteful.

Wukong continuous with his “weasley, manipulative ex” schtick:

Tripitaka, to his credit, maintains his boundary:

You really can’t say fairer than that. He doesn’t get violent - he gives Wukong a square warning.

It's pretty much the same when Wukong circles back when Tripitaka is hungry, dehydrated and vulnerable. Tripitaka still isn’t having it, and decides he’d rather die than accept sustenance from him. This, of course, is where Wukong hits Tripitaka - which is just beyond the pale.

Crying

Wukong gets an audience with Guanyin to dob on Tripitaka, and here’s where it happens:

I know next to nothing about pre-modern Chinese culture, but apparently this is how it’s DONE. 

For context, a few weeks ago, I tried to find out what the deal was with male crying. After all, Tripitaka cries a LOT. It turns out that academic Ya Zuo has done a bunch of work on it - at least for the Song era. It was fascinating - to me, anyway. (Scroll down to the row of tear drops if you’re not so fascinated, cos I’m gonna go on a spiel here.)

Crying was seen as an activity done by men, to be witnessed by other men, mostly for the sake of consolidating elite power alliances with… you guessed it… other men. Women and plebs could cry too, but their crying was seen as LAME, whereas elite male crying was BOSS.

This is kinda cool. Out of all the times somebody cried in Record of the Listener, it was men 42% of the time. That doesn’t sound like much, but women only made up 25% and children 4%. I guess the rest of the time it was deities, animals or - importantly - crying as a group activity. Group crying was well and truly a male-led, bromance-promoting activity. If Game of Thrones or House of Cards had been set in Song China, all the top players would have been strategically crying:

“[C]ontrary to the modern association of tears with weakness, male lacrymation [crying] in the Song acted to articulate and reinforce a position of dominance." (at 42)

Interestingly, Zuo finds that they weren’t necessarily crocodile tears - despite being political and purposeful.

Zuo explains a lot of interesting things. Apparently, one of the upsides of tears was that they could bridge awkward gaps where verbal communication would have just made things worse. As Zuo points out (I’m very loosely paraphrasing), you can’t really explain to the new emperor how you are TOTALLY loyal to them even though they just took over from your best bud the old emperor, who stood for the polar opposite. But you CAN bypass the awkwardness and cry your way into demonstrating some sort of unexplained yet heartfelt loyalty.

Wukong’s crying TOTALLY fits this. The “power alliance” thing, that is. Not the “this is too awkward to talk about” thing. He’s crying to try to convey his deep sincerity to Guanyin and forge an alliance, so he can force Tripitaka’s hand.

Tripitaka’s general teariness is a different beast. I’m still not sure that I understand the cultural context, but Zuo does talk about male tears in relation to morality. For instance:

That probably goes some way to explaining the waterworks when the queen of Women State and the scorpion demon tried to seduce him.

Guanyin: I’m always delighted when Guanyin makes an appearance. I could go on and on. Still, I don't really see why she thinks Wukong can't be in two places at once. Everyone knows he can do the hair-breath-clone thing. Unless someone's impersonating him.

Also, why would she send WUKONG with Sandy to go ascertain the truth at Flower-Fruit Mountain again? That’s like sending an accused criminal back to the scene of the crime with the police inspector to “help” them work out if the accused really did it.

Sandy: It was interesting to see Sandy take centre stage. I thought he was the even-keel voice of reason in the background. Apparently not, cos his idea of getting to the bottom of the truth about his doppelganger is simply to… kill him.

Dragon Horse: Why are they always tying up Dragon Horse? He’s an intelligent dragon-person in horse form. Surely he’s committed to the journey and knows not to wander off:

…

Tripitaka’s seeming death: Sandy and Bajie's reaction to thinking Tripitaka was dead was… oddly lax. They really should have tried a bit harder to check before calling it:

Calm down, guys. He's not dead.

Blue woollen wraps: What’s the deal with these? If they’re just blankets, can’t they get more? Did I miss some backstory? I’m gonna have to CTRL+F the chapters I missed, or something.

Tea rice: This made me want to try making tea rice. I’d never heard of it.

(Couldn’t find a pic of Chinese tea rice.)

Bad management: Why does Tripitaka bother to ask who wants to go to Flower-Fruit Mountain if he was always going to pick Sandy?

Wukong and the passport: He seems to think there’s a LOT more meaning to it than there is. Has the stress of the split turned him into some kind of passport conspiracy theorist? (Jokes.)

Wukong’s reply to Sandy about Golden Cicada makes no sense: Sandy points out that Wukong can’t just make his own journey to the west, because Tripitaka is Golden Cicada and that’s kind of the whole point. Wukong basically replies that he’s created his own clones of Tripitaka, Bajie and Sandy. But clearly the clone Tripitaka isn’t Golden Cicada, so it’s not really an answer.

Wukong’s group EATS their fallen comrade: what?!

Red Boy is still pretty snarky. I don’t think Wukong understands the concept of, “He’s just trying to get a rise out of you”:

And that’s it from me this week! I’m off to find out what the deal is with this Flower-Fruit Mountain Wukong clone thing.

“This is not what I meant when I said, ‘Let’s do body doubling'.”

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

---

Image credits: The usual spiel. The images/gif above are random content from the web, some modified, some not. They are not original. The pre-existing images should turn up with reverse googling or have links embedded, but feel free to ask and I’ll dig up sources.

[here4tripitaka]

Chapter 56: Tripitaka gets mugged; Tripitaka and Wukong have a blue

In this chapter, rather refreshingly, nobody wants to eat or have sex with Tripitaka. No. In this chapter, Tripitaka has the equally disastrous but rather more mundane experience of getting mugged.

Yep. Not realising who he is, some run-of-the-mill local bandits try to mug him, just like they would any other guy on the road. How’s that for equality?

It also goes to show how important it is to be in the know. If only they’d realised who he was, they could have eaten or sexed him and gained immortality. Clearly word doesn’t travel as fast on the human grapevine as the demonic grapevine. You’ve got to pay more attention to who’s been reincarnated recently, lads.

Anyway. I’m loving Bajie and Wukong’s dynamic in this chapter. They’re just two guys joking around, having fun and annoying each other for shits and giggles. Bajie is trying to hurry up Dragon Horse - who doesn’t care, and keeps plodding along at the same speed. Wukong rebukes Bajie, but then decides Bajie has a good point about hurrying up, and sends Dragon Horse sprinting. Owned, Bajie.

These hijinks lead to Tripitaka being galloped way up the road, all on his lonesome, where he is surrounded by bandits who want to mug him:

Pardon me. Not mug him. They are… self-appointed… tollway men:

They take payment in the form of clothes, horses and gold. And they don’t give concession rates to monks. Failure to pay may result in detention up a tree until one of your mates can come up with the money.

Now, what did I say about Tripitaka being better when Wukong isn’t around? There are no tears here: Tripitaka handles it like a pro. Sort of. He explains that, as a monk, he’s not exactly their best bet if they’re looking for sweet cash money. When they demand his clothes and horse instead, he just calmly explains that his robes aren’t worth stealing. He also implicitly threatens them that they’ll get a bad incarnation if they’re mean to him:

I love this little backgrounder about how the robes are made. It seems like the patchwork thing is a true story. Apparently, traditionally:

“Jiasha are made by piecing together sections of cloth donated from members of the community in a patchwork-style design. Unlike patchwork, the arrangement of panels is very specific, influenced by the Buddhist mandala motif, with a core center and flowing symmetry. The modest cut of the jiasha and pieced-together appearance references the rags worn by the Buddha during his ascetic period.”

Anyway, the muggers slash tollway men still aren’t impressed, so Tripitaka starts lying and pretending that Wukong will turn up any minute with the cash they want. That’s fine, but the narrator has a mega brain fade:

What? “Never lied in his life before”? Uh, remember two chapters ago, when Tripitaka was swearing to love and cherish the queen of Woman State til death do they part? Yeah. That little thing.

In any event, this is where Tripitaka begins crying. Well, fair enough. He did really try. The bandits tie him up and leave him dangling from a tree, where Wukong finds him.

I have to say, I love Wukong’s personality in this chapter, dubious as it may be. He’s so jovial:

I love him trolling the bandits, channelling pretend spirituality:

… before sweetly telling them that perhaps they should actually give him THEIR money:

And playing with the bandits - telling them they can have his staff if they can pick it up:

Ah, the iconic needle/staff in the ear:

But I’m interrupting myself:

Wukong is having a blast. Needless to say, he kills a few bandits. The rest flee.

Tripitaka proceeds to absolutely lose his marbles about Wukong committing homicide. And don’t get me wrong: it’s homicide. But Tripitaka manages to do it in a way that makes him come off as a jerk - which is quite something, when you’re protesting homicide.

When he discovers what’s happened, Tripitaka loses all spiritual composure. He starts acting like a road rager stuck in peak hour traffic, muttering low-grade verbal abuse:

Wukong isn’t even in earshot at this point. When he does get within earshot, Tripitaka continues:

Spite? That doesn’t sound very spiritual!

He attempts to give the bandits a proper burial, which seems nice at first. He gets Bajie to bury them, and tries to find incense and candles for the ritual - or substitutes, at least. But once he starts praying, it becomes clear what his real motives are. All he wants to do is suck up to the deceased, point the finger at Wukong, and make sure no ghosts come seeking retribution against him. It’s totally self-centred and fear-driven - not coming from a genuine place of caring for the deceased at all:

There is more to his prayer, and… it isn’t great, either. It’s just him telling the bandits that he, Tripitaka, tried to play nice (so it’s their own fault they got killed); that their deaths are Wukong’s fault (not his); and that he’s been very nice to them by doing this funeral ritual (ie he didn’t perform this funeral for selfless reasons: he did it so they will give him credit).

He could at least have wished them a positive reincarnation. Or something, anything, that was purely for their sake and not for his. Alas! Our young Tripitaka still has a way to go, spiritually.

Bajie sees through Tripitaka’s pseudo-spirituality, and teases him:

Wukong is less amused. He seems to find the ass-kissing funeral schtick ridiculous and kind of cowardly. Wukong isn’t afraid of any ghosts coming after him and makes this clear - perhaps more to make a point to Tripitaka than anything else:

Next, they find shelter at an old couple’s hut. The old man is nearly hysterical at the sight of the disciples, and won’t calm down. His wife is far more grounded, and gets him back on track.

I love how blunt people are about Bajie’s looks, and how indomitably cheerful Bajie’s response is:

They all have dinner, during which they find out that the old couple’s son is one of the bandits. Wukong offers to kill the son (huh?!), but the old man prefers him to stay alive, so he’ll have someone to dig his grave one day. The disciples gently remind Wukong that it’s none of his business.

Let’s cut to the middle of the night, where the bandits gatecrash the old couple’s house and decide to kill Tripitaka & co in their sleep. The old man tips them off.

I want to pause here to observe how bizarrely calm and composed the old man is. This is a guy who became hysterically scared just looking at the disciples’ faces. Now he’s in a tense and unexpected emergency situation, trying to sneak one group of guests out of the house, lest his other guests murder them. Yet he acts like it’s nothing. Is this not the first time that his bandit son has tried to murder a houseguest? Tripitaka is shaken by the news, but the old man sneaks them out and falls back asleep without a second thought:

Of course, the bandits give chase, and Wukong kills many. He goes out of his way to identify and behead the son of the old man - then show off the head to Tripitaka. 

Why Wukong would do this, I have no idea. Is this meant to indicate something about Confucianism? Or is it just Wukong’s usual love of homicide? I feel like I might be missing some cultural context.

Tripitaka falls off his horse in fright, yells at Wukong and, as soon as he’s able to stand again, breaks out the band-tightening spell on him. This, to me, is where Tripitaka crosses the line. It’s like he’s performing the Cruciatus Curse:

More than ten times? It's awful.

Now, just a heads up. I was VERY upset that Tripitaka did this, and I wrote a lot about it. But I realise we all have different perspectives. So if you don’t feel like reading a giant essay about why I felt this was so bad, here is a pretty picture of a traditional jiasha for you, and let’s pick up again next week.

Alright, brave reader. Here’s my reaction to Tripitaka’s torture spree.

I’m not saying that it’s inherently wrong to punish somebody for homicide with something along these lines. It would be a very different story if Trikitapa had taken time out, reflected on the whole thing, and soberly decided that it was necessary to do this as a punishment. But it just seems like he’s lost his temper and lashed out.

I think I’m more annoyed with Tripitaka than Wukong, because Wukong has never pretended to be anything other than a fighter and killer. Tripitaka acts like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and preaches compassion. Wukong didn’t want to become Buddhist and has only done it under duress. Tripitaka may not have chosen to become Buddhist originally, but he seems to have embraced it pretty enthusiastically. Wukong’s job is to keep Tripitaka alive on the road, so Tripitaka can get to the west - and Wukong is well and truly doing that job, even if Tripitaka doesn’t like the way that he’s doing it.

It’s easy to criticise others and backseat drive. Tripitaka is expecting Wukong to be both a consummate fighter and spiritually precise. Maybe, for Wukong to be the fearless fighter that he is, he needs a certain level of callousness. Wukong goes into situations that nobody else will - again and again. Who says it’s so easy for him to be proportionate when he’s fighting? It’s not always possible to be in two different gears at once. Tripitaka is all too ready to criticise and demand, without ever having walked a mile in Wukong’s shoes.

And Tripitaka seems to expect more of Wukong than Tripitaka expects of himself. Tripitaka hasn’t even tried to learn self-defence. He has not tried to become more well-rounded. Yet he tortures Wukong because, in his eyes, Wukong is not perfect enough or sufficiently well-rounded. I think Tripitaka should have to try to learn the 72 forms himself before he gets to even THINK about using torture on Wukong.

I never expected to find myself defending a killer - even a fictional magic monkey killer. Let me be very clear, I condemn homicide completely. I’m just saying, I think Tripitaka is a prick to use torture here. It was different when he used the band-tightening spell to try to prevent Wukong from killing somebody. That’s fair enough. But using it to lash out is inexcusable.

And it’s totally hypocritical. Tripitaka claims that he’s trying to teach Wukong compassion. It’s like he’s saying, “So help me God, I’ll beat you until you’re more compassionate.” How is that meant to work?

It disturbs me on the level of allegory, too. Like, if Wukong represents the mind-heart, what is this saying? That the mind-heart has to be dominated through force and brutality? Really?

After the band-tightening spell, Wukong begs Tripitaka to use his words, and Tripitaka obliges - saying he doesn’t want Tripitaka as his disciple.

Horrifyingly, Wukong kowtows to the guy who just went full Voldemort on him. I’m gonna say that kowtowing to someone who just tortured you seems like an excess of filial piety. But at least Wukong isn’t getting violent with Tripitaka like Tripitaka just got violent with him.

He begs for an explanation. This is pretty staggering. As wrong as it is for Tripitaka to use the band-tightening spell like this, it should be obvious to Wukong why he’s angry. Wukong clearly hasn’t listened to a word Tripitaka said, and he is a massive jerk for that.

Tripitaka explains (unsurprisingly) that it’s due to all the unnecessary killing, and tells him to get going before he uses the band-tightening spell again. Wukong vanishes.

Oof. Well, that was all very unpleasant. But I certainly want to see how this turns out next week.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

---

Image credits: The usual spiel. The images above are either AI, or random pictures from the web that I’ve modified, or a Frankenstein of both. They are not original. The AI image generation is by Stable Diffusion. The pre-existing images should turn up with reverse googling, but feel free to ask and I’ll dig up sources.

[here4tripitaka]

JTTW chapter 55: Tripitaka and the sexy scorpion spirit

The title really says it all:

So let’s recap. Tripitaka has been abducted by a demon who wants to have sex with him. He’s on his own this time - unlike last week, when all his mates were around to help him deal with the queen, who also wanted to have sex with him.

So Tripitaka is in the demon's cave, and the disciples are hanging around outside.

Sandy seems a bit over the whole rescue dynamic. He figures that Tripitaka can take care of himself, and that sex kidnapping is not that much of an emergency:

On the other hand, Wukong isn’t confident Tripitaka will pull through, and Bajie thinks it’s hopeless. The whole mission hinges on whether Tripitaka cracks and sleeps with her. Cos if he does, they're packing up and going home:

Well, Sandy was right. Tripitaka ACES it. The scorpion spirit is coming on strong, but Tripitaka just isn’t interested:

Note his forthright, stubborn attitude and conspicuous lack of crying. Contrast last week where he was turning red, looking away, physically shaking and crying:

WHAT IS THIS CHANGE OF PERSONALITY?

Either it's character growth (which has somehow occurred in the time it took for the scorpion spirit to teleport Tripitaka to her lair) or my theory (possibly based on a bit of wishful thinking) is that it’s influenced by whether Wukong is around or not.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love Tripitaka with Wukong. I love their potentially codependent relationship and the male-damsel-in-distress dynamic. Tripitaka is the most hopeless one of the group AND their undisputed leader. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen a male character lead a male group by crying and constantly requiring rescuing. I’m here for it.

But. Interestingly. When Wukong isn’t around, I feel like Tripitaka goes, “stuff it, I might as well save it,” and he calms down and just deals with stuff matter-of-factly.

I will admit he still cries ONCE:

Okay, twice:

Okay. So maybe I'm wrong. But on the whole, there is a lot less “clutching my handkerchief crying” sort of energy.

Anyway. When Tripitaka knocks back the scorpion spirit, the disciples decide he’s worth rescuing:

So basically, they deliberately abandoned him and left him alone with a demon overnight to shit test him.

They try to bust him out, but they don’t fare too well against the scorpion spirit’s sting. What are they to do? Don’t even worry: Guan Yin has got their back.

I love Guan Yin. You know where you stand with Guan Yin. There’s no praying and sitting around anxiously, wondering if she’ll come through. She’s already on it. Having trouble with a scorpion spirit you can’t conquer? Don’t worry:

And that guy is Orion.

Who turns out to be… a giant… rooster?

My reaction was, “Huh?!”

First I kind of assumed Wu Cheng’en was just having fun making up magic powers for random animals. But no! 

From my very scientific googling, it seems like maybe chicken > scorpion is actually a thing. TIL.

As a tangent, roosters got me thinking about alarm clocks, and how people used to wake up before alarm clocks were a thing. That took me down a rabbit hole, and now I’m discovering that candle clocks were a thing in ancient (ancient-ish?) China. Because apparently roosters are unreliable rogues and may crow at sunrise, but may also crow at 3am just cos they feel like it.

Behold:

So that’s that. But let’s circle back to something. I couldn’t help but notice that, in this chapter, Tripitaka calls the scorpion spirit a “powdered cadaver”:

Why so harsh? It isn’t cos of her looks. The narrator is pretty clear that she’s attractive. And it seemed uncannily like last week, where Bajie called the Queen of Women State a “powdered skeleton”:

It seemed a bit rich coming from him, when he clearly found her attractive:

I was starting to wonder if it was some kind of ancient Chinese insult for beautiful women when I found this journal article. It seems like, basically, the skeleton reference came from (separate but overlapping) Taoist and Buddhist practices of remembering that hotness is merely a superficial, meaningless property of the transient material world. Or something like that.

So, good on you Bajie and Tripitaka for sticking to your Buddhism. But… maybe just don’t say it OUT LOUD to people’s faces next time. Sure, stick to your asexuality, but no need to get personal about it!

I wonder if the queen and the scorpion spirit got the reference or if they were just like, “What the heck? I’m not that skeletal or powdery! YOU’RE skeletal and powdery!” We’ll never know.

And now, in no particular order, I wanna give a shoutout to some of my favourite miscellaneous moments from the chapter.

I love how the characters put so much emphasis on good manners, even when rushing around magically bashing people up. Wukung rocks up at Star God Orion’s place unannounced and asks him to drop everything and help him with something that is really not Orion’s problem - yet Orion refrains from telling him to get stuffed. Instead, he just worries that Wukong will think he’s rude if he doesn’t invite him in for tea:

Also, the wild swings between dramatic whining and understated stoicism. Bajie gets stung painfully on the snout, but doesn’t want to make a big deal of it to Orion:

Indeed. I, too, like to communicate my severe injuries only in a roundabout way, in the course of apologising for not being able to uphold proper etiquette.

Loved this sweet poem about Wukong as a majestic bee:

And learned that you’re not a babe unless you have spring onion fingers:

Some things went over my head, though. What do you mean, puns about meat buns and water pudding? I assure you, Tripitaka is not the only one who didn’t get it:

Even after reading Yu’s footnote about it:

As for my least favourite moments, Bajie is still being a chauvinistic so-and-so, calling women sexist words with disturbing enthusiasm. And Orion loses points for agreeing with Bajie wholeheartedly, instead of, you know, talking to him about his choice of language. But enough of that. Tripitaka has transcended the temptations of powdery skeletons, and it’s on with the journey.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

—

Credits: The images above are either AI, or random pictures from the web that I’ve captioned for this, or a Frankenstein of both. They are not original. The AI is a mix of VEED.IO and Stable Diffusion. As for the images, they should turn up with reverse googling, but ask if you’re curious and I’ll dig up sources. Disability means I can’t draw at the moment, but honestly this turned out to be pretty fun anyway. Thank you dear internet for this bounty of meme-able images.

[journeythroughjourneytothewest]

Pilgrims, I felt the need to inform you that I found the perfect summary of Tang Sanzang's adventure in the Kingdom of Women

[here4tripitaka]

JTTW chapter 54: Much Ado About Getting Your Passport Stamped (Sexual Harassment Survival Edition)

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

Alright. Let’s start with a chapter 54-themed personality quiz. (Is this allowed in book club? I don’t know.)

1. There’s someone drop-dead gorgeous around. How do you react?

(A) I turn red, cry and wish the whole thing wasn’t happening.

(B) I have a treasure staff and I’m not afraid to conk people on the head if they sleaze on my friends.

(C) Strategise. We can use this to get that passport stamp that we need.

(D) I don’t know, I didn’t notice. I was too busy teasing Bajie about his recent pregnancy.

(E) I drool and try to get them to marry me, obviously.

(F) I eat hay and chill out. I’ve already had one disastrous wedding.

2. Your friend has just broken up with somebody. How do you show up for them?

(A) I don’t know. I’m the hot one. My friends usually have to show up for me, not the other way around.

(B) Show up for them? What do you mean show up for them? I was the one who told him to love ‘em and leave ‘em in the first place.

(C) I yell at their ex, call them a powdered skeleton, and scare them off with my looks.

(D) I make sure they have space to heal by bashing any new suitors over the head with a treasure staff.

(E) I’m right here, all saddled up and ready to gallop my friend outta here before his ex knows what’s hit her.

Aaaalright. Let me back up a bit. I am so excited to discover that there’s a book club for JTTW. Especially for Yu’s translation. This is all of my JTTW fandom dreams come true.

Full disclosure, I watched the 1986 TV adaption to catch up on volumes 1 and 2. I wanna circle back and read them too. But in the meantime, HERE WE ARE.

Now, before we get into chapter 54, may we have a moment of silence to mourn the fact that I missed getting to do chapter 53 with y’all. I kind of wanted Tripitaka to have that baby. Just saying.

Anyway, let’s get to it.

I have to love this chapter, if only because it is firmly established as canon that Tripitaka is a BABE. No need to be subtle - the whole of the public is standing on the street, screaming that human seeds are coming:

His hotness is so overwhelming that people are sitting around, biting their fingers and shaking. It’s a lot:

Hot or not? The question soon becomes a matter of royal interest:

Happily for all, Tripitaka is a certified hottie:

His disciples, however, are not. They are so un-hot, in fact, that the queen wants them out of the queendom:

Maybe that’s why there are no men in the queendom: nobody but Tripitaka has ever been cute enough to make the cut. That or the queen just didn’t want potential spirits in her queendom. I’m not sure.

Anyway, back to Tripitaka’s looks. The Grand Preceptor is into him:

The narrator is into him:

The queen is into him:

And I mean REALLY into him:

“Ride the phoenix”, hey. Oh dear. But wait, there’s more:

And yet more:

So. We get the message. Tripitaka is the celibate babe of your dreams.

Tripitaka bears this all like the very epitome of blushing, virginal chastity. He’s startled:

He’s wordless:

He’s blushing and averting his gaze:

He’s physically shaking:

He’s straight up crying:

Then he pulls himself together and rallies strangely well:

What a turnaround. He’s gone from crying, blushing and speechless to calmly advocating for Bajie’s stomach. The queen’s “fragrant shoulders”, “peachlike cheeks” and “scented mouth” don’t phase him now.

I mean, hell, he’s even making small talk about vegetarianism. Those snuggles and smiles don’t throw him:

He gives a wedding toast. He calmly brushes off the queen’s attempts to hasten his coronation. He makes smalltalk about his religious name, his disciples’ origins, their mission from Guan Yin, everything. Who even needs Wukong? Suddenly, Tripitaka has GOT this.

When the time comes to complete the ruse, he smoothly talks the queen into letting him “send off” his disciples, before breaking it to her:

Well, what can you do. A lot of marriages do get annulled these days.

All hormones aside, let’s remember what this was about, at least for the guys: getting their passport stamped.

That’s their whole reason for playing along with this:

That and the fact that they didn’t want to bash up human women if it could be avoided.

And here it is - the magic moment of passport certification:

I feel like that could have been a bit more dramatic, considering. Still, when I read this, I couldn’t help but think, “Is this going to come back to bite them somehow - the fact that these three are now individually listed on the passport?” But I must remember that this is not some highly technical legal drama, and that nobody but me would be excited by a tale of bureaucratic paper wars over the passport particulars.

Anyway. You would think that Wukong could have just snuck in, stamped the passport and got them out of there. I think he honestly just found it funny how worked up Tripitaka gets about women, and preferred to stick around for the feast and the laughs.

Now, you may be thinking, “But hey, I’m still not quite sure after all of that - is Tripitaka really that attractive? And does it really, really matter?” FEAR NOT. This ain't over yet. Tripitaka has now been kidnapped by a woman who definitely wants to boink him, and his friends aren’t there to protect him. What will ensue? Will there be further sulking and blushing? We can only hope for a further, detailed investigation of the narrative significance of his hotness.