In this, the 8th book in our Journey to the West series, we meet the pig-man Zhu Bajie, who becomes Tangseng's second disciple. In his previous life, Zhu was the Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds, responsible for the Jade Emperor's entire navy and 80,000 sailors. But unable to control his appetites, he got drunk at a festival and attempted to seduce the Goddess of the Moon. The Jade Emperor banished him to earth, but as he plunged from heaven to earth he ended up in the womb of a sow and was reborn as a man-eating pig monster. This book tells the story of how Zhu was married to a farmer's daughter, fought with Sun Wukong, and ended up joining Tangseng and Sun Wukong in their journey to the Western Heaven. Zhu is the embodiment of stupidity, laziness, lust and greed. But he is brave and loyal, and also provides a bit of comic relief in the novel.

This book is based on Journey to The West (西游记, xī yóu jì), an epic novel written in the 16th Century by Wu Chen'en. The novel is loosely based on an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng (called Xuanzang and Sanzang in earlier books), who traveled from the Chinese city of Chang'an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned 17 years later with priceless knowledge and texts of Buddhism. Over the course of the book the band of travelers face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood.

All of the stories in this series are all written in simple language suitable for intermediate Chinese learners. Our core vocabulary for this book is 1,200 words, made up of the 600 words of HSK-3 plus another 600 or so words that were introduced in the previous books of the series. These words are all in the glossary at the back of the book. Whenever we introduce a new word or phrase, it's defined in a footnote on the page where it first appears, and also appears in the glossary.

In the main body of the book, each page of Chinese characters is matched with a facing page of pinyin. This is unusual for Chinese novels but we feel it's important. By including the pinyin, as well as a full English version and glossary at the end, we hope that every reader, no matter what level of mastery they have of the Chinese language, will be able to understand and enjoy the story we tell here.

Free audio versions of all books in this series are available on YouTube. Go to www.youtube.com and search for the Imagin8 Press channel to find all of our free audiobooks.