Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Journey to the West

Journey to the West must be one of the most famous novels that we don't know about. It's an epic Chinese novel (written in the 1590s) well known in East Asia, and I've seen pictures of the main character the Monkey King in both China and Japan.

Little known to most Americans is that they know of the main character. The Monkey King's name is "Sun Wukong" and the Japanese pronunciation is "Son Goku". Yes, you anime otaku, the character from Dragon Ball! In fact, Dragon Ball is loosely based on Journey to the West.


Click here for a Chinese remake of Journey to the West posted by chunwui5021. Those of you who read the book can figure out this is from the beginning, when the powerful Monkey King takes on Buddha himself. The bet is whether Sun Wukong can jump out of the palm of Buddha's hand.


Here's the karaoke clip of the theme song posted by kd6cute3.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I watched the version of Monkey King on the SciFi channel a few weekes ago. It starred Russel Wong, Bai Lin and some white guy.

It told the story of how the book, Journey to the West changed the world and needed to be preserved or the world would come to an end.

My wife refused to watch it because Bai Lin's character, the goddess of love falls in love and kisses the white guy.

She said it was blaphemous.

- Proto Bison

Anonymous said...

I was just about to post the version SCiFi made. It couldn't watch it. Bai Ling as the goddess of mercy? Bleh.

Anonymous - are you my husband posting anonymously? Because I almost kicked my hubby out of the house for Tivo-ing that crap.

Kakure Gaijin said...

Dana,

Ask your hubby if he knows what a Proto Bison is...

Anonymous said...

He just admitted to posting on your blog. I'm still upset he tivo'd that piece of horsecrap. Ick.