# Journey to the West 西遊記

73.0 s · v2 · Narrator: Frederick Surrey · Reader: Yun

The monkey hero’s surname is the word for macaque with its animal part taken off. The novel hides more monkeys in his stable title and calls him the mind-monkey. Arthur Waley’s 1942 English called him Monkey, and in 2021 that is still his English name.

| Time | Voice | Line | On screen |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0:00.50 | Narrator | In the Chinese novel Journey to the West, the monkey hero’s surname comes from the word for macaque, with the animal part removed. | A box closes round 西遊記 on the chapter 1 title column. Cut to the naming passage, where 猢猻 is boxed and lifted to the middle of the frame. |
| 0:09.38 | Narrator | Without the animal part, the second character leaves boy and infant, so his surname is Sun. | The animal radical lifts off. 孫 opens into 子 (boy) and 系 (infant), closes again, and “Sun” is typed under it. |
| 0:15.78 | Narrator | In 1942 Arthur Waley’s English translation left this out, and a footnote translated Sun as Monkey. | The tag ARTHUR WALEY, 1942 rises. A hairline runs from “Sun” to the word “Monkey,” labelled footnote. |
| 0:24.60 | Narrator | Waley called the book Monkey too. | Back to the title column. The title “Monkey” is typed in the film’s own type, with a hairline to 西遊記. |
| 0:27.48 | Narrator | He kept thirty of the hundred chapters. | The 1592 contents. Seventy columns fall to tint while the counter runs from 100 of 100 to 30 of 100. |
| 0:31.02 | Narrator | In the novel, Heaven gives the monkey a post in the imperial stables. | The chapter 4 woodcut of the court audience, with a slow push in. |
| 0:35.89 | Reader | 弼馬溫 <br>*Subtitle:* bìmǎwēn | The title is boxed in the chapter 4 text. It travels up, a copy drops below, and the copy’s characters swap to 避馬瘟. |
| 0:38.19 | Reader | 避馬瘟 <br>*Subtitle:* bìmǎwēn | Both rows stand with the shared reading between them, so one sound is heard under two spellings. |
| 0:39.30 | Narrator | The title is usually heard as ward off horse plague. | “ward off horse plague” is typed under 避馬瘟. |
| 0:42.30 | Narrator | Chinese stables kept a macaque for that job. | The horse manual’s line quoted in the Compendium of Materia Medica is set in Chinese type. 母猴 is boxed as “macaque,” and a hairline joins it to the title. |
| 0:46.10 | Narrator | In the oldest surviving edition, the chapter titles call him the mind-monkey. | The chapter 14 contents. 心猿 is boxed and lifted, and “mind-monkey” is typed under it. |
| 0:50.54 | Narrator | The scholar Hu Shih introduced Waley’s book to Americans as humour and satire, freed from allegorical readings. | Hu Shih’s 1939 photograph stands at the right while 心猿 stays untouched at the left, so the two readings sit side by side. |
| 0:57.36 | Narrator | Waley’s Monkey travels west with Pigsy the pig, Sandy the river monster and Tripitaka the monk. | Timothy Richard’s 1913 plates arrive one at a time, each on its spoken name, with Waley’s name typed under it. |
| 1:05.20 | Narrator | In 2021 Julia Lovell’s translation kept all four names, and its hero is still Monkey. | Lovell’s row of names is set under Waley’s. A box closes round both rows, then a second box closes round the two “Monkey” entries. |

Times are where each line starts in the final, read from the film's own audio.