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This book is based on chapters 10 and 11 of Journey to the West (西游记, xī yóu jì), an epic novel written in the 16th Century by Wu Chen’en. Journey to the West is loosely based on an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who traveled from the Chinese city of Chang’an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned 17 years later with priceless knowledge and texts of Buddhism. Over the course of the book the band of travelers face the 81 tribulations that Xuanzang had to endure to attain Buddhahood.
Each book in our Journey to the West series covers a short section of the original 2,000-page novel. The first three books in the series – The Rise of the Monkey King, Trouble in Heaven and The Immortal Peaches – all focus on Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and the fourth book, The Young Monk, introduces Xuanzang.
This book, the fifth in the series, tells the last story leading up to the actual journey to the west, which starts in Book 6. While the book has some light moments, it also has some of the darkest and most frightening scenes of all the stories we’ve told so far, with a series of horrifying visions of after-death punishment of evildoers that are reminiscent of those in Dante’s Inferno.
The story starts innocently enough, with two good friends chatting as they walk home after eating and drinking at a local inn. One of the men, a fisherman, tells his friend about a fortune-teller who advises him on where to find fish. This seemingly harmless conversation between two minor characters triggers a series of events that eventually cost the life of a supposedly immortal being, and cause the great Tang Emperor himself to be dragged down to the underworld.
In Chinese popular religion, the underworld (地狱, dìyù, literally “ground prison”) is not a final destination for sinners as hell is for Christians, but a transitory place that every deceased soul must pass through. The cosmos is divided into three domains: Earth, Heaven, and the underworld. Every being has a soul that survives after death, and upon death, the soul leaves the body and travels to the underworld, where it is judged, punished if necessary, and then assigned to its next earthly life for rebirth.
For the Chinese, the underworld is a stable and orderly place, with clerks, bureaucrats, ministers and kings all charged with keeping the afterlife running smoothly. As the Emperor Taizong discovers, there are even opportunities for financial transactions! The underworld looks a lot like the Earth, except that its inhabitants are all deceased souls waiting for reincarnation.
As you can see from the cover illustration, souls leave the underworld via the great Wheel of Rebirth. Six paths lead out of the underworld, each one leading to a Gate of Rebirth. Five of the paths are desireable (or at least tolerable), but a sixth one, the Path of Demons, is reserved for souls who must reincarnate as demons and monsters.
Taizong, the hero of the story in this book, was already a wise and compassionate ruler before his unexpected death, journey through the underworld, and return to life. He emerges with even more resolve to rule in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha. We will see later in Book 6 that he will need all his inner strength and clarity of vision to properly set Xuanzang on the path to the west.
All of the stories in this series are all written in simple language suitable for beginning Chinese learners at the 600-word HSK3 level. Whenever we introduce a word or phrase that isn’t part of HSK3 and was not already defined in a previous book, it’s defined in a footnote on the page where it first appears. All words are listed in the glossary at the end.
In the main body of the book, each page of Chinese characters is matched with a facing page of pinyin. This is unusual for Chinese novels but we feel it’s important. By including the pinyin, as well as a full English version and glossary at the end, we hope that every reader, no matter what level of mastery they have of the Chinese language, will be able to understand and enjoy the story we tell here.
Our website, www.imagin8press.com, contains links to other books you might enjoy, including other books in this series as they become available.
We hope you like this book, and we’d love to hear from you! Write us at info@imagin8press.com.
Jeff Pepper and Xiao Hui Wang
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
December 2017
Revised September 2021