Journey to the West

The Day He Was Given a Name

Birth 2, the patriarch Subhuti

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Before a cave gate deep in the mountains stands an inscribed stone tablet, and a monkey kneels before it while figures wait inside the gate.
Illustration from Master Li Zhuowu’s Commentary on Journey to the West, Ming woodblock, 1620sOriginal

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The Monkey King crossed the sea on a single raft. He reached a strange land and spent more than ten years among people, begging clothes to wear and learning to speak as they spoke.

But no deathless being was anywhere to be found. So he took a boat and went further west, and one day he heard a woodcutter singing.

The words of the song were not ordinary words. The woodcutter told him an immortal lived beyond the ridge, and the king went up that mountain without stopping.

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