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Monkey
西遊記
1978 · TV series · 2 seasons
ActionAdventureComedyScience FictionFantasy
Buddhist priest Tripitaka and his three disciples Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy, travel from China to India to fetch the Buddhist scriptures. They have been sent by Buddha, and getting these scriptures will bring peace to the people of the world.
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Some viewers will remember growing up with the TV series Monkey, whose bizarre images and stories of Pigsy and the titular flying Monkey I shall never forget.
Monkey Magic theme song anyone? https://youtu.be/wddJnq-D3XM?si=J2xAgXoygreTD73w
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)
Travellers from Asia journeyed to the Greco-Bactrian kingdom of Ghandara (whose name is a corruption of Alexandria) and took Buddhism back with them to the east. This is fictionalised in the story 'Journey to the West'. Nippon TV in Japan did a cool TV series adaption of this story that was dubbed into English and shown on kids TV in the UK as 'Monkey', which was quite popular back in the day. If you spend enough time wandering around the British Museum you learn all this stuff.
I suspect part of it is that China was so cut off from the rest of the world for so long over the last century. When I was growing up through the 70s and 80s, and even the 90s the only asian culture you got exposed to was mainly Japanese culture and Hong Kong movies. Mainland China was a cultural black box. Even the Chinese culture we did have access to, like "The Water Margin" and "Monkey" TV shows were Japanese productions.
The Journey to the West - Wu Cheng'en
Abridged English translation:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100237.Monkey
In its book form this story is basically unknown in the English-speaking world despite being considered one of four literary classics in Asia. And the 70s TV show that was based on this story was very faithful to the source material, particularly the humour.