#homgmei sun even proposes that most of SXG's less virtuous traits were simply grafted onto Zhu Bajie in Wu Cheng'en's version aetewasf

[sketching-shark]

Did you know that wukong kidnapped the princess of the golden cauldron country and apparently forced her to be his wife, before she’s got saved by nezha and li jing in some play (not in the OG novel) dang who knew he’d be that crazy XD

Happy Sun Wukong Sunday anon, and I do indeed know this. That said, the difference between that proto-Sun Wukong (who goes by the name Sun Xingzhe) and the Monkey King we know and love are so different that they really seem like two completely different characters! The scholar Hongmei Sun provides a really interesting overview of how radically the monkey pilgrim who guards the monk Xuanzang on his journey changed over time, and includes a good summary of what a unserious and sex-obsessed yaoguai the monkey of the play you mention is. I'm including a selection of her words on the matter below (putting in behind a keep reading sign because gosh dern this monkey is crude:

-"The six-part, twenty-four-act Zaju Xiyou ji is attributed to the fourteenth-century playwright Yang Jingxian, who lived during the late Yuan and early Ming periods. In the few hundred years between Shihua and Zaju, the story of ‘Journey to the West’ is not only more expanded, containing many of the stories that can be found later in Journey to the West, but the monkey figure in Zaju has grown into a character strikingly different from Hou Xingzhe. If Hou Xingzhe in Shihua is depicted as an advisor for Tripitaka, as respectable albeit mysterious deity, and a brave fighter, the monkey in Zaju is pictured as a rowdy clown, an untamed demon and ill-qualified Buddhist disciple.

-"The monkey’s name in Zaju now is almost the same as in the sixteenth-century fiction Journey to the West. He refers to himself as ‘Tongtian Dasheng’ (Great Sage Reaching Heaven), only one word’s difference from ‘Qitian Dasheng,’ the title Sun Wukong receives from the Taoist heaven in the sixteenth-century book. In some versions of the Monkey King story, including the Zaju, Qitian Dasheng and Tongtian Dasheng are brothers…”

-“Although Tongtian Dasheng is the monkey’s title, in the drama everyone calls him ‘the monkey’ (husun), including Guanyin, even though she is the person who gave him the names Sun Wukong and Sun Xingzhe (Acolyte). When Guanyin presents Sun Xingzhe to Tripitaka as his disciple, she gives the monkey an iron fillet, a cassock, and a knife….Even with the headband’s control, Tongtian Dasheng’s behavior and language indicate that his mind remains that of an irreverent demon.

-As in the zaju theater tradition, Sun Xingzhe introduces himself to the audience with a poem at his first appearance. Vaunting his celestial birth, his power, and the troubles he could create, in colloquial expression rather than elegant traditional terms as others’ opening poems, the monkey’s poem describes himself as a celebrated ape demon, referring to himself as the King of a Hundred Thousand Demons. In the following statement he introduces himself and his four siblings as his demon family: His elder brother Quitian Dasheng [i.e. Sun Wukong's self-given title], a younger brother Shuashua Sanlang, and two sisters, Lishan Laomu and Wu Zhiqi Shengmu. This genealogy of the monkey shows that Sun Xingzhe in Zaju is already much more localized, settled into the local religious/cult culture. Unlike the monkey in other versions, this one has a wife, the abducted princess of the Country off the Golden Cauldron. He also proudly reports to the audience his famous misdeeds, which is also the reason that heaven is after him: he has stolen the Jade Emperor’s celestial wine, Laozi’s golden elixir, and the Queen of the West’s (Xichi Wangmu) peaches and fairy clothes. He also makes upfront ribald references about himself in this very first speech. The monkey’s demonic heart is indicated by his intention to eat Tripitaka immediately after Tripitaka rescues him from beneath the mountain. He never shows any seriousness about his business of pilgrimage, and his behavior does not improve during the journey. When the team arrives in India, he uses crude language in a conversation with an old lady about Buddhist ideas of the ‘heart.’”

-“Sun Xingzhe does not act seriously, nor does he ever speak seriously. The king of demons seems to be good only at stealing and running away.”

-“In scenes 13-16, in the episode of Tripitaka and Sun Xingzhe’s encounter with Zhu Bajie the pig demon, who is converted into Tripitaka’s second disciple, Xingzhe offers to help fight the pig demon, but he is more interested in the Pei girl (old man Pei’s daughter) who has been abducted by Zhu. He only offers to help after old Pei tells him that his daughter is a rare beauty, and his dealings with the pig only revolve around the girl: when he visits the pig’s mountain home, he sees only the Pei girl, so his first action is to take the girl back to Pei. He then waits fo Zhu Bajie in the bridal chamber in the Pei girl’s clothing and flirts with the pig when he arrives…His sustained interest in woman and sex is demonstrated in another encounter with a demon in the Flaming Mountain episode. In this story, he seeks to borrow the Iron Fan from Princess Iron Fan (Tieshan Gongzhu) to put out the fire, but because he introduces himself using vulgar language, the princess refuses to lend him the fan and instead attacks him. Although eventually—with the help of Guanyin and other gods—the pilgrims pass the Flaming Mountains, the battle with Princess Iron Fain, which later becomes one of the most famous battles of Journey to the West, seems to be caused solely by Sun Xingzhe’s insolence.”

--“The vulgarity of Sun Xingzhe’s language persists throughout the drama. The zaju drama during the Yuan era is distinguished from most other earlier Chinese art forms by its use of informal, vernacual, and nonsensical language. The language that Xingzhe uses is the most vulgar of all, corresponding to his role as the clown. He amuses by making crude jokes and obscene references at most inappropriate occasions throughout the story. For instance, at a crucial moment of his life when Tripitaka meets him for the first time and tries to climb the mountain to have him released, the monkey starts a conversation about love and explains that Triitaka’s motivation to save him is his lust for the monkey’s thin waistline, which resembles that of a desirable beauty. The monkey makes a reference to Agilawood Pavilion (Chenxiang Ting), a place that is known through Li Bo’s poems about the love affair between Emperor Tang Xuanzong and his consort Yang Guifei.”

-“When asked about his heart, Xingzhe comments that he used to have a heart, but he ‘shit it out’ because his ‘asshole’ is too wide.”

-“From Shihua to Zaju, the monkey is transformed from a god who acts properly to a demon who uses foul language and makes suggestive jokes. In the hundred-chapter Journey to the West, Sun Wukong is turned into a multivalent figure, funny but not crude. The vulgarity of Sun Wukong seems to be peculiar to the Zaju version.”

-“If Hou Xingzhe is in general a god with positive qualities, Sun Xingzhe in Zaju shows the negative parts of his character coming into full bloom. He is much more associated with a buffoon and a demonic ape than with a celestial god. From Hou Xingzhe to Sun Xingzhe, the monkey figure is more localized, closely bound with popular culture. If we indeed can consider him as a figure on the way toward his Buddhist belief, he also remains the Taoist demon he claims to be and demonstrates his concern with keeping the order of Confucian values, as reflected in the Zhu Bajie sequence. Significantly, the monkey in Zaju receives the iron fillet from Guanyin, a device to control the demon in him, and which comes into use in the episode of the Land of Women. It is not until the hundred-chapter Journey to the West that the monkey also obtains his powerful weapon, the Golden-Hooped Rod, and hence completes the image of Sun Wukong that will become the most enduring version.”

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So in conclusion, while Hou Zingzhe is the ideal of a pious monk and Sun Wukong is a multivalent figure, Sun Xingzhe exists in the opposite extreme of a selfish demon like