My Grandpa the Monkey King

I wrote the following post on August 30, 2019.

There are always at least three good reasons to do something: For ourselves, for people like us, and for the people who made us who we are. This post is the story of the latter.

For those who don’t know who the Monkey King Sun Wukong, star of the classic novel Xi Youji or Journey to the West is, he’s like the Chinese version of Odysseus, Bugs Bunny, and Superman rolled into one. A master of the mystical and martial arts, the immortal monkey Sun Wukong fights demons with a magical shape-shifting staff and is on a quest to obtain mystical Buddhist scrolls that will grant enlightenment to himself and all who study them. Most Asian kids have encountered his story in one form of media or another, myself included. We listened to Sun Wukong tapes in the car, watched live-action CCTV Monkey King videos bootlegged from China after school, and learned Chinese by reading illustrated children’s versions of his stories.

So when my grandfather told me he was the Monkey King in the flesh, and that I was my favorite superhero’s monkey grandson, it was too thrilling for my 5 year-old self not to believe. Grandpa’s last name was also “Sun”, and he was from China. That was 99% of the proof that I needed. As for the last 1%?

“Grandpa, if you’re the Monkey King, where is your staff?” I asked.

“You remember those posts that connect the checkout counters to the ceiling at our local Chinese grocery store?”

“Yeah?”

“One of them’s my staff! I lent it to the owner so his store wouldn’t collapse. Luckily, no demons have shown up lately, or ol’ Mr. Zhao will have to find another way to keep his roof up.”

Myth confirmed.

Later I would learn that this desire children had to be connected to Sun Wukong—or any beloved character for that matter—was not uncommon. Long before he became globally recognized as the Little Dragon, Bruce Lee was demanding that his elementary school classmates in Hong Kong call him the Monkey King. Then there’s the news story about the boy who tied a blanket around his shoulders like Superman and flew off his roof… only to immediately land and break his leg.

Maybe you never read that story, but my aunt certainly did. One of the most disappointing days of my pre-adolescent life came when she took me aside and told me it was all a lie: the Monkey King isn’t real, there’s no way he’s my grandpa, and I definitely had to stop pretending or I would get seriously hurt.

So I did.

On some level, I knew that what she said was true. If grandpa could clear vast distances with a single leap, why own a car or take a plane? If he was a master of magic, why didn’t he ever use it? Also, grandpa never seemed to remember which exact post at the grocery store was his. Every time I asked I got a different answer. But just because the details to my grandpa’s fiction didn’t check out the way my aunt’s facts did, doesn’t mean she was entirely right.

The stories we tell ourselves serve many purposes, and one of them is to encapsulate in its characters the enduring archetypes of our own personalities. What makes them resonate—what draws us to them and even want to be them—is the fact that they do what we would like to do when confronted with adversity. Demons may not manifest as physical beings, but we face symbolic ones all the time. Like the Monkey King, we can overcome them by acquiring the right tools, transforming our identities and mastering useful skills. In telling me that the Monkey King’s legend was his and that I was his descendant, I believe my grandfather was trying to impart the attributes that served both him and the character well so that I could go on to live out its sequel.

Grandpa also knew that it was the certain immutable core qualities of figures like Sun Wukong—aka their virtues—interplaying with the infinitely malleable aspects of their world and changing with every retelling that leads to a story’s enduring success and ongoing relevance. Whether warriors or athletes, tricksters or bureaucrats, magicians or scientists, all get adapted and evolved to help fans face the challenges of their times. Learning about Joseph Campbell while indulging my own interests in comic books, TV shows, video games, and all the other manifestations of popular and “high” culture, I recognized the ways in which old myths echo through new ones.

In this way, also, we are like our mythological heroes. Dragon Ball is Journey to the West retold in a science fantasy setting, Goku is Wukong translated into Japanese. And just as Goku owes his existence to Wukong and Superman wouldn’t exist without Samson or Hercules, we are also permutations of those who came before us, echoes of many of their core attributes. Some of these traits are useful for success in our times, others are not. As much as I inherited my grandfather’s cleverness and creativity, I also got his monkey-like temper and impulsiveness.

The result? Like any good sequel, my life turned out vastly different from my grandfather’s (he worked in Taiwanese politics, I’m a San Francisco writer) while retaining many similarities (we both emigrated from our birth countries in our youth and went through times when we struggled to make ends meet). Being able to notice the difference between what about our favorite stories and people are useful to our current reality (pluck and resourcefulness, for example) and what will hurt us if we try to act them out (the untested belief in self-propelled flight, as another) is the problem every one of us is tasked with solving in our lifetimes.

While I no longer believe that I’ll ever learn how to leap 18,000 miles in one somersault or master 72 transformations like the Monkey King, and the posts from that grocery store are likely under a scrap heap in a landfill somewhere, I still believe that there is some Monkey King within me. Just as there is also some Superman, and some Bugs, and some Odysseus.

Most importantly, I carry a lot of my grandfather. While his story ended with his passing, the sequel goes on. And I’m going to do my best to ensure it gets better with every retelling.