A stone egg splits open on Flower-Fruit Mountain and a stone monkey steps out, bows to the four quarters and shoots two beams of golden light up to Heaven. He finds the cave behind the waterfall, the monkeys crown him their king, and he sets off to learn how not to die. He comes back with real magic and no respect for anyone. Heaven tries to buy him off with a title, Keeper of the Horses, and he walks out, names himself Great Sage Equal to Heaven, and raids the Peach Banquet. It takes the Buddha himself to put him under a mountain.
Meanwhile, in the Tang capital Chang’an, a monk named Xuanzang is chosen to fetch scriptures from the West. He was set adrift on the river as a baby and raised in a temple. The Buddha has the scriptures ready, and Bodhisattva Guanyin has come east to find the man to carry them, with his protectors already lined up.
The first is the Monkey, freed from under the mountain on condition that he serve the monk. Then a dragon that swallows the pilgrim’s horse and is made to take its place, a disgraced heavenly marshal in the body of a pig, and a river ogre from Flowing-Sand River. The road west holds eighty-one ordeals: demons who want the monk, kingdoms with strange laws, a mountain of fire, a cave of spider women. The Monkey’s cleverness and temper have to fix most of it, and he is not an easy man to travel with.
