Sun Wukong

The Monkey King, Sun Wukong (孫悟空, pinyin: sun1 wu4kong1), is perhaps the most famous and beloved fictional character in all of classic Chinese literature. He is the main character of Journey to the West, a story dating back to the Tang dynasty. Through a series of audacious stunts he acquires immortality, shape-changing ability, cloud travel skills, and ownership of a handy as-you-will resizeable cudgel which can be nestled behind the ear for easy carrying or resized to tree-trunk size for pounding the sense out of dragons. Above all he has monkey chutzpah.

Sun Wukong learned many of his magical tricks while serving as a disciple under the Patriarch Subodhi; it was the Patriarch who gave him the name "Wukong" ("aware of emptiness"). (The Patriarch, who by the time they parted ways was certain the monkey would come to a bad end, made him promise never to tell anyone who his teacher was.)

He is invited to the Heavenly Kingdom by the Jade Emperor[?] in the hopes that a promotion and title will make him a little more manageable. He proves to be an incorrigible monkey, however, and soon he is scarfing down the Empress's Pears of Immortality and popping Lord Lao Tzu's Pills of Indestructability like they were Tic Tacs. Feeling guilty, but not that guilty, he becomes the biggest headache for everybody in heaven. Only with great effort and teamwork are the eminent beings in heaven able combine forces and stuff him into Lord Lao Tzu's eight-way trigem oven which is hot enough to reduce anything to cinders. After a good long cook and then some, they lift the lid to peek -- and out jumps Monkey King, completely unharmed apart from some smoke in his eyes.

All other options exhausted, they finally appeal to the Buddha himself, who arrives in an instant from his temple in the West. The Buddha effortlessly defeats Monkey and places him under a mountain. There he must remain imprisoned under rock until he can offer serve the future Sanzang, the Tang Priest, who is destined to make the journey to the West to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures for China. The bodhisattva Guanyin helps Sanzang by giving him a magical headband which Sanzang puts on Monkey's head. With a special word Sanzang is able to tighten the band until Monkey cannot bear the pain. In that way he is brought to his true calling as a disciple of Buddha.

For the rest of the epic Sun Wukong faithfully helps the Tang Priest on his journey to the west. The are joined by Friar Sand (Sha Wujing) and Pig (Zhu Bajie), two other monsters who have been tamed in advance by Guanyin and woven into Sanzang's destiny. The group gets into many scrapes and must learn many Buddhist lessons before they return safely to the Tang empire with the treasure of the Buddhist scripture.

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Son Goku, the central character in the Japanese animation Dragon Ball, is partly based on Sun Wukong.