Chaplin by Stephen Weissman

Chaplin by Stephen Weissman

As the monk Tangseng and his three disciples travel west, they find their path blocked by a huge blazing mountain eight hundred miles wide. Tangseng refuses to go around it, so his senior disciple, the monkey king Sun Wukong, must discover why the mountain is on fire and how they can cross it. He soon learns that he himself caused the mountain to ignite five centuries earlier. But finding out how to extinguish the blaze is a far more difficult and dangerous task.

This is the 20th book in the best-selling Journey to the West>series of stories for students learning to read Chinese. It is based on the events in Chapters 59 through 61 of the epic 16th century novel of the same name by Wu Chen'en. That novel was inspired by an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng, who traveled from Chang'an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned seventeen years later with priceless knowledge and spiritual texts. Over the course of the book Tangseng and his companions face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood.

The first 20 books in the Journey to the West series have used a total of about 1800 different Chinese words, but only 834 are used in this book. All new words are defined on the page where they are first used. The book uses Traditional Chinese characters and includes pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary. A free audiobook is available on YouTube's Imagin8 Press channel and on www.imagin8press.com.