Monkey King’s Journey to the West: Transmission of a Chinese Folktale to Anglophone Children

In versions for children of the renowned Chinese folktale ‘Journey to the West’, people tend to shorten the text and eliminate the religious tone in order to make the story more appealing; and in English retellings, the character of Monkey King is traditionally given prominence. In recent retellings for children, the figure of Monkey King is starting to be adjusted to reflect western ideologies, according to Irene Chen. She compares a range of English-language adaptations of ‘Monkey King’, which, she argues, act as a medium for the integration of eastern and western cultures