The Journey to the West, Books 28 and 29

This book contains the full text of the 28th and 29th stories in our 31-volume Journey to the West series for people learning to read Chinese. The stories told here are unchanged from the original books except for minor editing and reformatting. In The Dharma Destroying Kingdom, Tangseng and his three disciples enter a city whose king has vowed to kill 10,000 Buddhist monks and has already finished off 9,996. The travelers must avoid being killed and figure out how to show the king the error of his ways. Later, the Monkey King Sun Wukong battles demons who use the "Dividing the Petals of the Plum Flower" trick to kidnap Tangseng. In The Nine Headed Lion, the travelers find themselves in a kingdom where it hasn't rained for three years because the prefect has angered the King of Heaven. Sun Wukong brings rain and, of course, trouble. Later, the disciples' magic weapons are stolen by a nearby lion demon. When they go to retrieve them, they encounter an entire family of lion demons, including a nine-headed lion with vast powers. These three stories are written in Simplified Chinese and use a total of 1199 different Chinese words. Each page of Chinese has a facing page of pinyin. The book includes a full English translation and glossary. Free audio versions of the three stories are available for free on YouTube's Imagin8 Press channel and on our website, www.imagin8press.com.