The pig-man Zhu Bajie becomes Tangseng’s second disciple.  In his previous life, Zhu was the Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds, responsible for the Jade Emperor’s entire navy and 80,000 sailors.  But unable to control his appetites, he got drunk at a festival and attempted to seduce the Goddess of the Moon.  The Jade Emperor banished him to earth, but as he plunged from heaven to earth he ended up in the womb of a sow and was reborn as a man-eating pig monster.  He marries a farmer’s daughter, fights with Sun Wukong, and ends up joining Tangseng and Sun Wukong in their journey to the Western Heaven. 

This is the 8th book in the best-selling The Journey to the West series of stories for students learning to read Chinese. It is based on the epic 16th century novel of the same name by Wu Chen’en.  That novel was inspired by an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng, who traveled from Chang’an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned seventeen years later with priceless knowledge and spiritual texts. Over the course of the book Tangseng and his companions face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood.

The first 8 books in the Journey to the West series have used a total of about 1200 different Chinese words, but only 656 are used in this book. All new words are defined on the page where they are first used. The book uses Simplified Chinese characters and includes pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary. A free audiobook is available on YouTube’s Imagin8 Press channel and on www.imagin8press.com.