The Journey to the West, Books 4, 5 and 6

This book is a compilation of books 4, 5 and 6 in our Journey to the West series of story books for people learning to read Chinese.The three stories told here - The Young Monk, The Emperor in Hell, and The Journey Begins - are unchanged from our original versions except for minor editing and reformatting. In The Young Monk, we tell the story of Xuanzang, the monk chosen by the Buddha to undertake the dangerous journey westward to India and bring sacred wisdom back to China. Unlike the previous books which told of Sun Wukong's great adventures (and misadventures) across heaven and earth, this story deals with smaller, human-scale events and the traditional themes of love, loyalty, treachery and revenge. Our story begins with the Buddha's decision to bring his wisdom to China. Then we meet the young couple - Guangrui and Wenjiao - who become Xuanzang's parents. We witness their terrible ordeals around the time of Xuanzang's birth, and we then jump ahead to when he turns eighteen,