Journey to the West 2: The Pilgrimage for Buddhist Scriptures (Level 2) - Graded Readers for Chinese Language Learners (Literary Stories)(800 words)

The series Graded Readers for Chinese Language Learners is composed of 50 books, divided into three subseries, namely folktales, literary stories and historical stories, corresponding to Levels 1-3 respectively. The rich and fun content and easy-to-understand language makes it easy for everyone, whether they are foreigners learning Chinese, children with parents of Chinese origin, ethnic minority students of the Chinese language, or even primary school students in China, to read this series. It enables the readers to gradually improve their Chinese reading skills and enhance their understanding of Chinese culture by reading and enjoying stories. The “Literary Stories” subseries is based on the Four Great Classical Novels in ancient China. From each novel some epic snippets are extracted and adapted into 4-6 books, each with 20-30 thousand characters. Altogether there are 20 books in the subseries, six of which are from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, four from Water Margin, six from Journey to the West and four from Dream of the Red Chamber. Journey to the West is a mythological novel, telling the story of a Tang dynasty monk called Xuanzang (Mong Tang) who, under the order of the Tang emperor, went west on a pilgrimage for Buddhist scriptures with his three disciples Sun Wukong the Monkey King, Zhu Bajie the Pigsy and Monk Sha. During the journey, they defeated demons and monsters and experienced all kinds of ordeals. There are six books in this series based on this novel, namely Havoc in Heaven, The Pilgrimage for Buddhist Scriptures, Three Battles with the White Bone Demon, The Flaming Mountains, The Real and Fake Monkey King and The Leiyin Temple. Pilgrimage for Buddhist Scriptures tells the story of Monk Tang taking Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Monk Sha as his disciples and going on the journey to the west with them. Buddha in the west (India) has Buddhist scriptures which encourage people to do good deeds, so the Tang emperor sent Xuanzang to fetch the scriptures. On his journey, Xuanzang saved Sun Wukong from the Wuxing Mountain, who then became his disciple and agreed to escort him to fetch the scriptures. The Goddess of Mercy put a golden hoop on Sun Wukong’s head and taught Monk Tang an incantation of tightening the golden hoop. Whenever the incantation was recited, Sun Wukong felt a terrible headache, which forced him to be obedient. Later Monk Tang met his other disciples, the White Dragon Horse, Zhu Bajie and Monk Sha, one after another. Together they escorted Monk Tang to the west.