by Wu Cheng-En
“Never mind him,” said Pig. “Let's go in. This Taoist may well be quite a decent bloke.”
As they went through the second gate they saw two boys come scurrying out. This is what they looked like:
Pure bones, lively spirits, pretty faces,
And hair tied in childish tufts.
Their Taoist robes naturally wreathed in mist,
The sleeves of their feather clothes were floating in the wind.
Their jade belts were tied with dragon-head knots,
Their grass sandals lightly fastened with silk.
In their elegance they were unlike common mortals-
The Taoist boys Pure Wind and Bright Moon.
The two boys bowed and came out to greet them. “We are sorry we did not welcome you properly, venerable master,” they said. “Please sit down.” Sanzang was delighted, and he accompanied the two boys up to the main hall of the temple, which faced South. There was a patterned lattice window that let through the light on top of the door that the boys pushed open. They asked the Tang Priest to come in, and he saw two huge words executed in many colours hanging on the wall-Heaven and Earth. There was an incense table of red carved lacquer on which stood a pair of golden censers and a supply of incense.
Sanzang went over to the table and put a pinch of incense in the censers with his left hand while performing triple reverences. Then he turned round to the boys and said, “This temple is a home of Immortals in the Western Continent, so why don't you worship the Three Pure Ones, the Four Emperors, and all the ministers of Heaven? Why do you burn incense to the two words 'Heaven' and 'Earth?'”
“To be frank with you, venerable teacher,” the boys replied with smiles, “it's quite right to worship the top word, 'Heaven,' but the bottom one, 'Earth,' gets no incense from us. Our teacher only put them up to ingratiate himself.”
“How does he ingratiate himself?” Sanzang asked.
“The Three Pure Ones and the Four Emperors are our teacher's friends,” the boys replied, “the Nine Bright Shiners are his juniors, and the Constellations are his underlings.”
When Monkey heard this he collapsed with laughter, and Pig asked him, “What are you laughing at?”
“They say that I get up to no good, but these Taoist boys really tell whoppers.”
“Where is your teacher?” Sanzang asked them.
“He had an invitation from the Original Celestial Jade Pure One and has gone to the Palace in the Heaven of Supreme Purity to hear a lecture on the Product of Undifferentiated Unity, so he's not at home.”
At this Monkey could not help roaring, “Stinking Taoist boys, you don't know who you're talking to. You play your dirty tricks in front of our faces and pretend to be oh-so-innocent. What Heavenly Immortal of the Great Monad lives in the Miluo Palace? Who invited your cow's hoof of a master to a lecture?”
Sanzang was worried that now he had lost his temper the boys would answer back and spark off a disastrous fight, so he said, “Don't quarrel with them, Wukong. We'll be going in a minute, so we obviously need have nothing to do with them. Besides, as the saying goes, 'egrets don't eat egret flesh'. Their master isn't here anyway, so there would be no point in wrecking the place. Go and graze the horse outside the gate. Friar Sand, you look after the luggage, and tell Pig to take some rice from our bundles and use their kitchen to make our meal. When we go we shall give them a few coppers for the firewood. All do as I've told you and leave me here to rest. When we have eaten we shall be on our way again.” The three of them went off to do their jobs.
Bright Moon and Pure Wind were meanwhile quietly praising Sanzang to each other: “What a splendid monk. He is indeed the beloved sage of the West in mortal form, and his true nature is not at all befuddled. The master told us to entertain him and give him some manfruit as a token of their old friendship, and he also warned us to be on our guard against those hooligans of his. They have murderous-looking faces and coarse natures. Thank goodness he sent them away, because if they were still with him, we wouldn't be able to give him the manfruit.”
“We don't yet know whether this monk is our master's old friend or not,” said Pure Wind. “We'd better ask him to make sure.” The two of them then went over to Sanzang and said, “May we ask you, venerable master, whether you are the Sanzang of the Great Tang who is going to the Western Heaven to fetch the scriptures?”
“Yes, I am,” said Sanzang, returning their bows. “How did you know who I was?”
“Our master told us before he went,” they replied, “to go out to meet you long before you got here, but as you came faster than we expected we failed to do so. Please sit down, teacher, while we fetch you some tea.”
“I am honoured,” said Sanzang. Bright Moon hurried out and came back with a cup of fragrant tea for him.
When Sanzang had drunk the tea, Pure Wind said to Bright Moon, “We must do as our teacher told us and fetch the fruit.”
The two boys left Sanzang and went to their room, where one of them picked up a golden rod and the other a red dish, on which he put many a silk handkerchief as cushioning. They went into the manfruit orchard, where Pure Wind climbed the tree and tapped the fruit with the golden rod while Bright Moon waited below to catch them in the dish.
They only took a few moments to knock down and catch a couple, which they took to the front hall to offer to Sanzang with the words, “This temple of ours is on a remote and desolate mountain, master Sanzang, and there is no local delicacy we can offer you except these two pieces of fruit. We hope they will quench your thirst.”
At the sight of the manfruit the monk recoiled some three feet, shaking with horror. “Goodness me!” he exclaimed. “How could you be so reduced to starvation in this year of plenty as to eat human flesh? And how could I possibly quench my thirst with a newborn baby?”
“This monk has developed eyes of flesh and a mortal body in the battlefield of mouths and tongues and the sea of disputation,” thought Pure Wind, “and he can't recognize the treasures of this home of Immortals.”
“Venerable master,” said Bright Moon, “this is what is called 'manfruit,' and there is no reason why you should not eat one.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” said Sanzang. “They were conceived by their fathers and mothers and had to go through no end of suffering before they were born. How can you treat them as fruit when they haven't been alive for three days yet?”
“They really and truly grew on a tree,” said Pure Wind.
“Stuff and rubbish,” Sanzang replied. “Babies don't grow on trees. Take them away, you inhuman beasts.”
As he refused absolutely to eat them, the two boys had to take the dish away and go back to their room. This fruit was rather difficult to handle, and did not keep for long without becoming hard and inedible, so the boys sat on their beds and ate one each.
Oh dear! What a thing to happen! There was only a wall separating their room from the kitchen, where their whispering could be clearly heard. Pig was in there cooking the rice when he heard them talk as they fetched the golden rod and the red dish. Later he heard them saying that the Tang Priest had not recognized the manfruit, which was why they took them back to their room to eat.
“I'd love to try one, but I don't know how,” thought Pig, unable to prevent his mouth from watering. Too stupid to do anything about it himself, he had to wait until he could talk it over with Brother Monkey. He had now lost all interest in stoking the stove as he stood in front of it, constantly poking his head outside the kitchen to look for Monkey. Before long Monkey appeared leading the horse, which he tethered to a locust tree. As he came round to the back, the blockhead waved frantically to him and said, “Come here, come here.”
Monkey turned round, came to the kitchen door, and said, “What are you yelling for, idiot? Not enough food for you? Let the old monk eat his fill, then we two can go to the next big house that lies ahead and beg for some more.”
“Come in,” said Pig, “it's not that. Do you know that there's a treasure in
this temple?”
“What treasure?” Monkey asked.
“I can't describe it because you've never seen it,” said Pig, “and if I gave it to you, you wouldn't know what it was.”
“Don't try to make a fool of me, idiot,” said Monkey. “When I studied the Way of Immortality five hundred years ago I traveled on my cloud to the comers of the ocean and the edge of the sky. I've seen everything.”
“Have you seen manfruit then?” Pig asked.
“No, I haven't,” said Monkey with astonishment. “But I've heard that manfruit is Grass-returning Cinnabar, and that anyone who eats it lives to a great old age. Where can we get some?”
“Here,” said Pig. “Those boys gave two to our master, but that old monk didn't know what they were and thought they were newborn babies. He wouldn't eat them. Those boys are disgraceful-instead of giving them to us as they should have done they sneaked off into their room and had one each, gobble, gobble, gobble-I was drooling. I wish I knew how I could try one. Surely you've got some dodge for getting into the orchard and pinching a few for us to taste. You have, haven't you?”
“Easy,” said Monkey. “I'll go in and pick some.”
As he rushed out Pig grabbed him and said, “I heard them saying in their room that they needed a golden rod to knock them down with. You must do this very carefully-nobody must know about it.”
“I know, I know,” replied Monkey.
The Great Sage made himself invisible and slipped into the boys' room, only to find that after eating the fruit they had gone to the front hall, where they were talking to Sanzang. Monkey looked all around the room for the golden rod until he saw a two-foot length of gold hanging from the window lattice. It was about as thick as a finger. At the bottom was a lump like a bulb of garlic, and at the top was a hole through which was fastened a green silk tassel. “So this must be what they call the golden rod,” he thought as he took it down. He left the room and pushed open a pair of gates at the back. Goodness! He saw a garden
With red, jeweled balconies
And a twisting artificial hill.
Rare flowers try to outshine the sun,
The bamboo attempts to be bluer than the sky.
Outside the Floating Cup Pavilion
A curve of willows hangs like mist;
Before the Platform to Admire the Moon
Clumps of lofty pines make splashes of indigo.
Bright, bright red,
The pomegranate thicket;
Deep, deep green,
The cushions of grass.
Richly blue
Were the jade-coloured orchids;
Rushing and powerful
The water in the stream.
Crimson cassia blazed beside golden wells and wutong trees.
Brocade-rich locust trees flanked red balconies and steps.
There was peach blossom in pink and white,
Yellow and fragrant chrysanthemums that have seen nine autumns.
Trellises of raspberries
Flourish by the peony pavilion;
Banks of hibiscus
Lead to beds of tree-peonies.
There is no end of noble bamboos that have held out against frost.
Or lordly pines that defy the snows.
Then there are nests of cranes and houses for deer,
Square ponds and round pools,
Spring water like fragments of jade,
Golden heaps of flowers.
The North wind bursts the white plum blossom open.
When spring comes, it touches the crab-apple with red.
It can be rightly called the most splendid view on Earth,
The finest garden in the West.
Before Monkey had time to take all of this in he saw another gate. When he pushed it open he saw
Vegetables for each of the four seasons-
Spinach, celery, beetroot, ginger, and kelp,
Bamboo shoots, sweet potato, melons, oblong gourd and wild rice stem,
Onions, garlic, coriander, scallion and shallots,
Lettuce, artemisia, and bitter alisma,
Gourds and aubergines that must be planted,
Rutabaga, turnips, docks,
Red amaranth, green cabbage, and purple mustard-plant.
“So they're Taoists who grow their own food,” thought Monkey, smiling to himself. When he had crossed the vegetable garden he saw yet another gate, and when he opened it there was a huge tree in front of him with fragrant branches and shade-giving green leaves shaped rather like those of plantains. The tree was about a thousand feet high, and its trunk was some seventy or eighty feet round. Monkey leant against it and looked up, and on a branch that was pointing South he saw a manfruit, which really did look just like a newborn child. The stem came from its bottom, and as it hung from the branch its hands and feet waved wildly around and it shook its head. Monkey was thoroughly delighted, and he thought in admiration, “What a splendid thing-a real rarity, a real rarity.” And with that thought he went shooting up the tree.
Now there is nothing that monkeys are better at than climbing trees to steal fruit, and one blow from the golden rod sent the manfruit tumbling down. He jumped down to fetch it, but it was nowhere to be seen. He searched the grass all around, but could find not a trace of it. “That's odd,” he thought, “very odd indeed. It must be able to use its feet-but even then it won't be able to get past the wall. No, I've got it. The local deity of this garden has hidden it away to stop me stealing it.”
He made some finger magic and uttered the sacred sound “Om,” which forced the garden deity to come forward, bow and say, “You summoned me, Great Sage. What are your orders?”
“Surely you know,” Monkey said, “that I am the most famous criminal on earth. When I stole the sacred peaches, the imperial wine, and the elixir of immortality some years ago, nobody dared to try and take a cut. How comes it that when I take some fruit today you pinch my very first one? This fruit grows on a tree, and the birds of the air must have their share of it, so what harm will be done if I eat one? Why did you snatch it the moment it fell down?”
“Great Sage,” the deity replied, “don't be angry with me. These treasures belong to the Immortals of the Earth, and I am a ghost Immortal, so I would never dare take one. I've never even had the good fortune to smell one.”
“If you didn't take it, why did it disappear the moment I knocked it down from the tree?” Monkey asked.
“You may know that these treasures give eternal life, Great Sage,” the deity replied, “but you don't know about their origin.”
“Where do they come from, then?” Monkey asked.
“These treasures,” the deity replied, “take three thousand years to blossom, another three thousand to form, and three thousand more to ripen. In almost ten thousand years only thirty grow. Anyone lucky enough to smell one will live for three hundred and sixty years, and if you eat one you will live to be forty-seven thousand. These fruit fear only the Five Elements.”
“What do you mean, 'fear only the Five Elements?'“ Monkey asked.
“If they meet metal,” the deity said, “they fall; if they meet wood they rot; if they meet water they dissolve; if they meet fire they are burnt; and if they meet earth they go into it. If you tap them you have to use a golden rod, otherwise they won't drop; and when you knock them down you must catch them in a bowl padded with silk handkerchiefs. If they come in contact with wooden utensils they rot, and even if you eat one it won't make you live any longer. When you eat them you must do so off porcelain, and they should be cooked in clear water. If they come in contact with fire they become charred and useless, and they go into any earth they touch. When you knocked one to the ground just now it went straight in, and as the earth here will now live for forty-seven thousand years you wouldn't be able to make any impression on it even with a steel drill: it's much harder than wrought iron. But if a man eats one he wins long life. Try hitting the ground if you don't believe me.” Monkey raised his gold-ringed cudgel a
nd brought it down on the ground. There was a loud noise as the cudgel sprang back. The ground was unmarked.
“So you're right,” said Monkey, “you're right. This cudgel of mine can smash rocks to powder and even leave its mark on wrought iron, but this time it did no damage at all. This means that I was wrong to blame you. You may go back now.” At this the local deity went back to his shrine.
The Great Sage now had a plan. He climbed the tree and then held the rod in one hand while he undid the lapel of his cloth tunic and made it into a kind of pouch. He pushed the leaves and branches aside and knocked down three manfruits, which he caught in his tunic. He jumped out of the tree and went straight to the kitchen, where a smiling Pig asked him if he had got any. “This is the stuff, isn't it?” said Monkey. “I was able to get some. We mustn't leave Friar Sand in the dark, so give him a shout.”
“Come here, Friar Sand,” Pig called, waving his hand. Friar Sand put the luggage down, hurried into the kitchen, and asked, “Why did you call me?”
“Do you know what these are?” Monkey asked, opening his tunic. “Manfruits,” said Friar Sand as soon as he saw them. “Good,” said Monkey, “you know what they are. Where have you eaten them?”
“I've never eaten them,” Friar Sand replied, “but when I was the Curtain-lifting General in the old days I used to escort the imperial carriage to the Peach Banquets, and I saw some that Immortals from over the seas brought as birthday presents for the Queen Mother. I've certainly seen them, but I've never tasted one. Please give me a bit to try.”
“No need to ask,” said Monkey. “We're having one each.”
So each of them had one manfruit to eat. Pig had both an enormous appetite and an enormous mouth, and had, moreover, been suffering pangs of hunger ever since hearing the Taoist boys eating. So the moment he saw the fruit he grabbed one, opened his mouth, and gulped it down whole; then he put on an innocent expression and shamelessly asked the other two what they were eating. “Manfruit,” Friar Sand replied.