60 Fun Facts About Sun Wukong (Monkey King)

According to Journey to the West, what is the Monkey King born from?

A magical stone on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit bursts and yields a stone egg, and the wind turns the egg into a monkey whose eyes shoot beams of gold light up to Heaven.

What lets Sun Wukong cover 108,000 li in an instant?

A cloud somersault takes a hand sign, a spell, a clenched fist and a shake of the body; his master taught it to him after seeing him tumble into the air where other immortals stamp.

How many transformations does Sun Wukong master?

72, and he picked the number himself: offered 36 heavenly changes or 72 earthly ones, he told his master he was "always eager to catch more fishes".

Where does the Monkey King keep his staff when he is not using it?

In his ear, as a needle: he only has to call "Smaller!" three times and the twenty-foot iron pillar shrinks to fit, and "Bigger!" brings it back.

Sun Wukong becomes king of the monkeys by daring to leap through what?

A waterfall hid an iron bridge and a furnished cave, the Water Curtain Cave; the monkeys had sworn to crown whoever went through and came back unharmed.

Sun Wukong takes his staff from the undersea palace of the Dragon King of which sea?

The East Sea's Dragon King, Ao Guang, offered lesser weapons first: Wukong tried a 7,200-jin halberd, called it too light and stuck it in the ground.

The novel says Wukong's staff was once a gauge for measuring the ancient floodwaters, used by which legendary ruler?

Yu the Great set the depths of rivers and seas with it, which is why the Dragon King shrugs it off as a useless lump of iron and is talked into giving it away.

How did translator Anthony C. Yu render the name of Wukong's staff, Ruyi Jingu Bang?

The Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod earns its first word at once: when Wukong grumbles that the pillar is too thick and too long, it shrinks to suit him.

What lowly job is the Monkey King given when Heaven first invites him in?

Keeper of the heavenly horses is an unranked post, the lowest in Heaven; when he finds out, he tips over his desk and fights his way out of the stables and home.

The Silver-Horned King calls out to Wukong and sucks him into a gourd when Wukong does what?

Answers aloud, and Wukong knew the rule: he gave a scrambled false name, answered to that, and was sucked in all the same. Later he stole the gourd, called the demon's name and bottled him too.

What does Wukong's self-proclaimed title Qitian Dasheng mean?

Great Sage, Heaven's Equal was granted as an empty title, with no duties and no pay, purely to keep him quiet; only later was he handed real work, guarding the peach garden.

What slight sends Wukong off to wreck the Queen Mother's Peach Banquet before it starts?

Not invited: the fairy maids picking peaches for the feast recited the guest list without his name, so he froze them with a spell and went off to drink the banquet wine himself.

Which deity, the Jade Emperor's nephew, fights Wukong to a standstill during the Havoc in Heaven?

Erlang Shen sees through Wukong's best disguise, a wayside shrine, because the tail he couldn't hide stands behind it as a flagpole, where no shrine keeps one.

Whose steel ring, thrown from Heaven's gate, knocks Wukong off his feet so he can be bound?

Laozi's ring strikes Wukong on the head in the middle of a fight; as he scrambles up to run, a god's hound sinks its teeth into his calf.

The captured Wukong is sealed in the eight-trigram furnace for 49 days to extract what?

An elixir, the one he had stolen: blades, fire and thunderbolts had all failed to mark him, because the pills he had swallowed had fused inside him and made him as hard as diamond.

What new power does the Monkey King bring out of the eight-trigram furnace?

Fiery eyes that see evil were an accident: he hid in the furnace's wind corner, where there was no flame, but the smoke blowing through stung his eyes red for good.

What does Wukong do at the five pillars he takes for the edge of the universe?

He scrawls graffiti and urinates to prove he got there, then finds his own writing on the Buddha's middle finger: the pillars were a hand, which becomes the mountain that pins him.

For how long is the Monkey King imprisoned under the mountain?

500 years pass before the monk Tang Sanzang peels the seal off the summit; Wukong tells him to walk well clear, then bursts out as the mountain splits.

What mantra is written on the paper talisman that seals Wukong under the mountain?

Om Mani Padme Hum, six gold characters on a slip of paper, is pasted on the summit once Wukong's head starts to work free, and the mountain at once takes root.

What is Wukong given to eat when hungry during his imprisonment?

Iron pellets are, in the novel's telling, an act of mercy: the Buddha posts a local god to keep the prisoner fed, with molten copper to drink when he is thirsty.

What happens when Tang Sanzang chants the spell for Wukong's golden band?

It tightens and causes a headache that leaves him rolling on the ground; he was tricked into putting it on, hidden in a flowered cap that the monk said taught scriptures by itself.

How many tribulations must the pilgrims of Journey to the West endure to earn enlightenment?

Eighty-one is nine times nine, the number of perfection, so when the bodhisattva's tally comes up one short she has the pilgrims dropped out of the sky on their way home.

What title does the Monkey King receive when he attains Buddhahood at the end of the novel?

Victorious Fighting Buddha in hand, he at once asks to have his headband smashed, only to be told it has already gone; he reaches up and finds his head bare.

What does the given name Wukong mean?

Awakened to emptiness is the name his first teacher gives him, with the surname Sun: in the novel it is a word for monkey with the 'beast' part of its character taken away.

Wukong's first master raps his head three times and stalks off; what is the secret message?

Come at the third watch: three raps meant midnight, and the hands clasped behind the master's back meant the back door, where Wukong was taught immortality in secret.

Which demon gets Wukong banished by coming to Tang Sanzang as three innocent villagers in turn?

The White Bone Demon comes as a girl, then her mother, then her father; Wukong strikes down all three, and the monk, seeing only murders, sends him away.

Which Hindu deity did scholar Hu Shih propose as a model for the Monkey King?

Hanuman, the monkey general of the Ramayana, was Hu Shih's candidate: he wrote that he doubted so mighty a monkey was a home-grown product rather than an import.

What does Wukong need to borrow to put out the Flaming Mountains?

A magic plantain fan is the only cure, and the blaze is his own fault: the mountains caught fire from hot bricks that fell when he kicked over Heaven's furnace long before.

Wukong shouts "Change!" and turns a handful of what into clones of himself?

His body hairs, 84,000 of them, can each become whatever he likes; in his first fight he chews hair to bits, blows it out with the shout, and hundreds of little monkeys mob the demon.

Who offers the imprisoned Wukong his freedom if he will guard a monk travelling to fetch scriptures?

Guanyin finds him on her way east to seek out the pilgrim; he swears to reform on the spot, and she later slips the monk a headband in case he forgets.

What does Wukong draw on the ground with his staff to protect Tang Sanzang from demons?

A circle, which he promises is stronger than walls of bronze and iron; the others tire of sitting inside it, step out, and walk straight into a demon's trap.

The life-extending ginseng fruit Wukong steals looks uncannily like what?

A newborn baby, limbs and all, is what each fruit resembles, so Tang Sanzang recoils and refuses to taste one; his disciples then steal some for themselves.

Which of these becomes one of Wukong's sworn brothers in the Seven Sages early in the novel?

The Bull Demon King was the eldest of the seven sworn brothers; much later he and Wukong meet as enemies, because the monkey had got his son Red Boy captured.

Which impostor, one of the four spiritual primates, fights Wukong to a draw while passing as his exact double?

The Six-Eared Macaque copies him so exactly that neither his master nor Heaven's demon-revealing mirror can tell them apart; it takes the Buddha to unmask him, and Wukong kills the double on the spot.

Which toy company launched Monkie Kid, a 2020 toy line and cartoon inspired by the Monkey King?

LEGO spent two years working with children and parents in China on Monkie Kid, whose hero is an ordinary boy who finds the Monkey King's legendary staff.

China's Wukong space telescope, launched in 2015, was built to search for what?

Dark matter is its quarry: the probe counts cosmic-ray electrons, and its first big result was the first direct detection of a sharp break in their energy spread.

Sun Wukong Fossa, a trench named for the Monkey King's trip through the underworld, lies on which world?

Pluto shares its name with the Roman god of the dead, so the New Horizons team labelled its trenches after travellers to the underworld; this one is their informal coinage.

Journey to the West is set in the Tang, but its earliest surviving edition was printed under which dynasty?

Ming it was: in 1592 a Nanjing printing house issued the earliest surviving edition with no author's name on it, which is why the credit for the novel has long been argued over.

Who translated Journey to the West as the 1942 abridgement Monkey?

Arthur Waley taught himself Chinese at the British Museum and never once set foot in China; his Monkey keeps 30 of the novel's 100 chapters and drops most of its verse.

Wukong traps Pigsy, a village squire's unwanted son-in-law, by posing as whom?

His wife, the squire's daughter, had been shut away by the demon for half a year; Wukong took her shape and, when the pig came home and tried to kiss him, threw him off the bed by the snout.

Freshly freed and with nothing to wear, Wukong makes his famous kilt from the skin of which animal?

A tiger charges the pair and Wukong, delighted, says it has come to bring him clothes; one blow of his staff later he is cutting its pelt to size.

The real monk Xuanzang, model for Tang Sanzang, defied a Tang travel ban to study Buddhism in which land?

India was out of bounds under an imperial ban on travel abroad, so he slipped out of Chang'an in secret and found his teacher at the great monastery of Nalanda.

Which Xi'an landmark did Xuanzang build for his scriptures?

The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda went up in 652 with Xuanzang directing the work himself, but the tower he built is not the one standing today: half a century later it was rebuilt taller under Empress Wu Zetian.

Before his fall from Heaven, Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) held what post?

Marshal Tianpeng commanded Heaven's river fleet until he got drunk at a Peach Banquet and pestered the moon goddess; sent down to be reborn, he landed by mistake in a sow's litter.

What did Sha Wujing (Sandy) break at a Heavenly Peach Festival, earning his exile to earth?

A crystal cup slipped from his hand at the feast; for that he took 800 lashes, was banished to a river of quicksand, and is stabbed by a flying sword every seventh day.

What prize does Wukong demand if he can leap out of the Buddha's palm?

The Jade Emperor's throne was the stake: Wukong argued that emperors should take turns and his was due, so the Buddha bet him the palace against a long spell back on earth.

What is wrong with the first set of scriptures the pilgrims carry away from the Buddha's temple?

The scrolls are blank because the pilgrims had no gift for the two disciples handing them out; sent back, Tang Sanzang pays with his begging bowl and gets the written ones.

Though set in China, the cult TV series Monkey (1978-80), famous in its BBC dub, was made where?

Japan made it, and the BBC's English dub turned it into a cult favourite abroad: the new dialogue played it for laughs, like a comical spaghetti Western.

Dragon Ball's Son Goku, based on Sun Wukong, was created by which manga artist?

Akira Toriyama first planned Goku as an actual monkey, then made him a boy with a tail so that, he said, you would know him even hidden behind a rock.

Which studio developed the 2024 hit Black Myth: Wukong?

Game Science added a twist of its own: you never play Sun Wukong himself but the Destined One, a later monkey sent out to gather the dead hero's scattered relics.

What beat Black Myth: Wukong to Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024?

Astro Bot took the top prize, but Black Myth: Wukong did not go home empty-handed: it won Best Action Game and the fan-voted Players' Voice award.

Which Hong Kong comedy star played the Monkey King in the 1995 film A Chinese Odyssey?

Stephen Chow plays him reborn as Joker, a bandit chief with no memory of being the Monkey King, who uses a time-travelling box to try to save the woman he loves.

Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese was adapted for which streaming service?

Disney+ made it a 2023 series with a twist on the legend: the new boy at school turns out to be the Monkey King's own son, on the run with his father's staff.

Which master takes in the Monkey King as a pupil and teaches him the secret of immortality?

Puti Zushi later expels him for showing off a transformation to his classmates, and makes him swear never to tell anyone who taught him.

What title does the young Wukong take when he becomes ruler of Flower Fruit Mountain?

Handsome Monkey King was his own choice of title, and he ruled the mountain in carefree ease for centuries, until a sudden fear of death sent him overseas to look for a teacher.

What does Sun Wukong erase from the Book of Life and Death in the underworld?

His name and every monkey's went under the brush, which is why, the novel says, many monkeys on his mountain never grew old: the underworld had no record of them.

Having taken the staff, what does Wukong bully the four Dragon Kings into handing over next?

A suit of golden armour: the first Dragon King's three brothers chip in chain mail, a phoenix-feather cap and a pair of boots, and then all four agree to file a complaint against him in Heaven.

Which heavenly adviser persuades the Jade Emperor to flatter the Monkey King rather than fight him?

Gold Star, the old spirit of the planet Venus, twice talks the court out of war, first with a job offer and then with an empty title, and both times carries the invitation down himself.

After drinking from a river in the land of women, Tang Sanzang and Pigsy both become what?

Pregnant, because the river is how the country's women conceive; Wukong has to fight his way to a guarded spring whose water ends the pregnancies.

Which weapon does Wukong's fellow disciple Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) carry on the road west?

A nine-toothed rake, which Wukong mocks as a tool for hoeing vegetables; Pigsy retorts that it was forged in Heaven and given to him by the Jade Emperor.