May 03, 2004

Classic Chinese Literature in Comic Strip Form. One of the most famous of all is the story of the Monkey King.
posted by plep 20 years ago
  • plep, will you marry me?
  • I mean it! I love you! *MWA* This is too good!
  • In the worlds before Monkey, primal chaos reigned. Heaven sought order, but the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown. The four worlds formed again and yet again, as endless aeons wheeled and passed. Time and the pure essences of heaven, the moisture of the Earth, the powers of the sun and the moon all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation - and it became magically fertile. That first egg was named "Thought". Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said, "With our thoughts, we make the world." Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it then came a stone monkey. The nature of Monkey was... irrepressible! Mooonkeeeeeeeeyyyyy!!!!
  • [banana]
  • Wow, they've even got Peony Pavillion. I had to sit through the Chinese opera version of that... for about a week... Oh and, uh... ), 'cause the Monkey King rocks in whatever form you can find it.
  • This is excellent. I went to the British Museum a couple of months back, and in the Japanese section they had some old scrolls with illustrated retellings of the Tale of Genji, and others, quite similar to these. I really wanted to be able to read them all (they only had a tiny portion of them viewable).
  • ..... I'm speechless with awe. Thanks for the link!
  • Just about the only childrens books that I can remember reading when I was young was a series of illustrated books telling the story of the Monkey King. I wish I knew what happened to those books, they had some amazing illustrations. All of the figures from Chinese Mythology certainly loomed large in my 8-year-old mind (or whenever it was that I actually read them). So yeah, thanks for the link, it was a trip back to read that story again. Now it's off to my attic, to see if I can uncover those books...
  • Wonderful, plep! The other stories are every bit as good as those featuring Monkey!
  • I remember trying so hard to get my hot little hands on Golden Plum Vase (or Golden Lotus) because it was supposed to be the erotic novel of Chinese literature. Was rather disappointed by how tame it was.