The Thieves

As the travelers continue westward, the monkey king Sun Wukong steals rice from an elderly villager‘s kitchen. Then the pig-man Zhu Bajie takes three silk vests from a seemingly abandoned tower. These small crimes trigger a violent confrontation with a monster who uses a strange and powerful weapon to disarm and defeat the disciples. Helpless and out of options, Sun Wukong must journey to Thunderclap Mountain and beg the Buddha himself for help. This is the 17th book in the best-selling Journey to the West series of stories for students learning to read Chinese. It is based on the events in Chapters 50 through 52 of the epic 16th century novel of the same name by Wu Chen‘en. That novel was inspired by an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng, who traveled from Chang‘an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned seventeen years later with priceless knowledge and spiritual texts. Over the course of the book Tangseng and his companions face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood. The first 17 books in the Journey to the West series have used a total of about 1800 different Chinese words, but only 801 are used in this book. All new words are defined on the page where they are first used. The book uses Traditional Chinese characters and includes pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary.