This book contains the full text of the first three stories in our best-selling Journey to the West series for people learning to read Chinese. The three stories told here - The Rise of the Monkey King, Trouble in Heaven, and The Immortal Peaches - are unchanged from our original versions except for minor editing and reformatting.
These three stories all focus on the adventures of Sun Wukong, the Handsome Monkey King, one of the most famous characters in Chinese literature and culture. His legendary bravery, his foolish mistakes, his sharp-tongued commentary and his yearning for immortality and spiritual knowledge have inspired hundreds of books, television shows, graphic novels, video games and films.
The full story of Sun Wukong's adventures is told in Journey to the West, an epic 2,000 page novel written in the 16th Century by Wu Cheng'en. Journey to the West is probably the most famous and best-loved novel in China and is considered one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature.
The story is written, as much as possible, using the 600-word vocabulary of HSK3. It is presented in Simplified Chinese characters and pinyin, and includes an English version and complete glossary. A free audiobook is available on YouTube's Imagin8 Press channel, and on our website, www.imagin8press.com.