Sun Wukong (孫悟空, Sūn Wùkōng?), also known as Great Sage Equal of Heaven (齊天大聖, Qí tiān dàshèng?), Handsome Monkey King (美猴王, Měihóu wáng?), Heaven-born Stone Monkey (天產石猴, Tiān chǎn shí hóu?), is one of the main characters in Journey to the West.
Synopsis[]
He is a monkey born from a magical rock on top of Flowers and Fruit Mountain. When his eyes moved, two beams of golden light shot towards the Heavenly Palace and surprise the Jade Emperor. On the mountain, the monkey befriends various animals and joins a group of other monkeys. They decide to seek the stream's source and climb the mountain to a waterfall. They declare that whoever goes through the waterfall, finds the stream's source, and comes out again will become their king.
In search of a weapon, he travels to the oceans and gets the Ruyi Jingu Bang which stabilizes the Four Seas and is the Treasure of the Eastern Dragon King. After rebelling against heaven and being imprisoned under Five Finger Mountain for 500 years by Buddha, he later accompanies the monk Tang Sanzang on a journey to retrieve Buddhist sutras from India. At the end of the journey, Wukong is granted the title of Victorious Fighting Buddha and ascends to Buddhahood.
Abilities[]
Sun Wukong possesses many abilities:
- He has amazing strength and is able to support the weight of two heaven mountains on his shoulders while running "with the speed of a meteor". He is extremely fast, able to travel 108,000 li in one somersault.
- He has vast memorization skills and can remember every monkey ever born. As king of the monkeys it is his duty to keep track of and protect every monkey.
- Sun Wukong also acquires the 72 Earthly Transformations, which allow him to access 72 unique powers, including the ability to transform into animals and objects, as well as disguise himself as other people and beings. He once disguises himself as Jade Emperor to troll Erlang Shen.
- He is a skilled fighter, capable of defeating the best warriors of heaven.
- His hair has magical properties, capable of making copies of himself or transforming into various weapons, animals and other things.
- He also shows partial weather manipulation skills.
- He can stop people in place with fixing magic.
- He can shrink and expand objects (as shown in Dragon Palace of the East Sea).
Trivia[]
- He is one of the immortal characters, the others being Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing and so on.
- His weapon is the Ruyi Jingu Bang / Ding Hai Shen Zhen (golden cudgel) which weighs around 7360 kg
- He has Jin Jing Huo Yan (True sight), he can distinguish humans and demons.
- He has the Jin Gang Bu Huai Zhi Shen.
- Knows the 72 Earthly transformations.
- His hair has magical properties, which allows him to summon clones of himself, and/or into various weapons, animals, and other objects.
Novel[]
Appearance:
- "Though you have rather a base sort of body, you look like one of the rhesus monkeys that eat pine seeds." (the Patriarch / Subhuti)[1]
- "You don't even stand four feet from the ground, you're still in your twenties." (Demon King of Confusion)[2]
- Has 84k hairs on his body[2]
Gallery[]
Portrayals[]
Sun Wukong is portrayed by Zhang Jinlai, Wu Yue
Trivia[]
- Monkey King is a mythological figure who features in a body of legends. Xuanzang's story had been told since the Tang dynasty, and the appearance of a monkey character can be traced back to the Song dynasty.
- The supernatural abilities displayed by Wukong and some other characters were widely thought of as "magic powers" at the time of Journey to the West's writing during the Ming Dynasty and were often translated as such in non-Chinese versions of the book.