**“The best English edition of the classic Chinese fantasy novel I have ever read.” ―Minjie Chen, Chapter One

After Pan Gu created the universe, by separating earth and sky with his mighty ax, the world was divided into four continents, in the north, south, east, and west. Our story takes place in the east.

By a great ocean lay a land called Aolai, within which was a mountain called Flower-Fruit, home to sundry immortals. What a mountain it was: of crimson ridges and strange boulders, phoenixes and unicorns, evergreen grasses and immortal peaches. And on its peak sat a divine stone, thirty-six and a half feet high, twenty-four in circumference.

Since creation, this rock had been nourished by Heaven and Earth, the sun and the moon, until it was divinely inspired with an immortal embryo, and one day gave birth to a stone egg, about as large as a ball. After exposure to the air, it turned into a stone monkey, with perfectly sculpted features and limbs. This monkey learned to climb and run, then bowed in all four directions of the compass. Two golden rays shone from his eyes all the way to the Palace of the Polestar, startling the benevolent sage of Heaven, the Jade Emperor, while he sat on his throne in the Hall of Divine Mists surrounded by his immortal ministers. The emperor ordered two of his generals, Thousand-Mile Eye and Follow-the-Wind Ear, to look out of the South Gate of Heaven and locate the source of this light. "Your humble servants," they soon reported back, "have traced it back to Flower-Fruit Mountain, in the small country of Aolai on the eastern continent, where a rock has given birth to an egg, which has turned into a stone monkey, whose golden eyes have dazzled even Your Majesty. But now the monkey has paused for some refreshment, and the blaze has dimmed."

"The creatures of the mortal world are all born from heaven and earth," the Jade Emperor remarked tolerantly. "Nothing they do can surprise us."

The monkey gamboled over the mountains, eating grass, drinking from streams, picking mountain flowers, hunting for fruit; he kept company with wolves and snakes, tigers and panthers, befriended deer and antelope, and swore brotherhood with macaques and apes. At night, he slept below cliffs; at sunrise, he wandered through mountains and caves, with no sense of the passing of time.

One sweltering morning, he sheltered from the heat with a crowd of monkeys in the shade of some pines; they swung from branch to branch, built sand pagodas, and chased dragonflies and lizards. Afterward, bathing in a mountain stream, they noticed how its current seemed to tumble like rolling melons and wondered where it was coming from. "As we don't have anything particular to do today," one of them suggested, "let's follow the stream to its origin." With shrieks of happy agreement, they all scrambled up the mountain to a great curtain of a waterfall.

The monkeys clapped their hands in delight. "Whoever dares pass through the waterfall to discover the source of the water, and returns alive, can be our king."

After three calls for a volunteer, the stone monkey suddenly jumped out of the crowd. "I'll go!" This excellent monkey closed his eyes, crouched, then sprang with one bound through the sheet of water. Once on the other side, he opened his eyes. Before him was a gleaming iron bridge, under which flowed the source of the stream. From the bridge, he could see into a beautiful cave residence: cushioned with moss, hung with stalactites, furnished with carved benches and beds, and equipped with pans and stoves. In the middle of the bridge hung a stone tablet on which was written, in large, regular calligraphy, the following address:

Heavenly Water-Curtain Cave

The Blessed Land of Flower-Fruit Mountain

The stone monkey leaped back out through the waterfall. "Fantastic luck!" he whooped.

"What's it like inside?" the other monkeys crowded around to ask. "How deep is the water?"

"It's the perfect place for us to make our home, an ideal refuge from heaven's fits of temper," explained the stone monkey, and described the wonders of Water-Curtain Cave. "It could easily hold thousands of us. Let's move in straightaway."

"You go first and we'll follow behind!" yelped the others.

Once more, the stone monkey crouched, shut his eyes, and sprang through the water. "Come on!" he called. The braver of the monkeys immediately followed; the more nervous ones tweaked their ears, scratched their cheeks, stretched, and chattered a good deal before eventually leaping onto the bridge and into the cave. Once there, they were soon snatching at bowls, fighting over stoves and beds, and dragging things back and forth-for such is the mischief of monkeys. There was not a moment's peace until they'd fretted themselves into exhaustion.

The stone monkey spoke again: "A monkey stands and falls by his word. You promised that whoever dared pass through the waterfall and returned safely would be king. So what are you waiting for?"

Without a murmur of dissent, the monkeys immediately bowed and wished their new king a long, long life. Their new ruler quickly dropped his old name-Stone Monkey-in favor of Beautiful Monkey King and appointed a few of the monkeys to ministerial and civil service positions. The monkeys then devoted themselves to exploring the delights of Flower-Fruit Mountain by day and returning to Water-Curtain Cave at night.

The Beautiful Monkey King lived this happy, innocent life for somewhere between three and five hundred years. Then one day, while banqueting with the other monkeys, he suddenly became melancholy and began to weep. "What has upset our great king?" clamored the others.

"I fear for the future," the monkey king explained with a sigh.

"But we live in bliss," said his subjects, laughing, "slaves of neither the unicorn, phoenix, nor man. Why are you worrying about the future?"

The monkey king said: "Life is good now, but eventually we will grow old and fall into the clutches of Yama, King of the Underworld."

While the monkey masses-instantly fearful-buried their faces in their hands and mewled piteously, a long-armed ape jumped out of the crowd: "Our great king's new sense of mortality suggests the beginnings of a religious calling. Only three types of creature can escape King Yama and his wheel of life and death: Buddhas, immortals, and holy sages."

"Where are they to be found?" asked the monkey king.

"In ancient caves on divine mountains."

"I leave immediately," declared the monkey king. "Even if my quest takes me to the very end of the world, I will return with the secret of eternal life."

All the monkeys applauded wildly. "Marvelous! First, though, we will gather fruits from far away for a huge send-off feast." The next day was taken up with preparing and consuming this banquet, an extraordinary spread of plums, cherries, lychees, pears, dates, peaches, strawberries, almonds, walnuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, tangerines, sugarcane, persimmons and pomegranates, and coconut and grape wine. The monkey king sat at the head of the tables, with his subjects approaching in turn, in strict order of age and rank, to toast him with wine, flowers, and fruit.

The following day, the monkey king rose early. "Make me a dry pinewood raft, little monkeys, and fetch me a bamboo pole and some fruit for the journey." When all was ready, he hopped onto the raft and, pushing off with all his might, set off across the ocean. He was in luck, for a strong southeasterly wind blew him directly to the northwest coast of the southern continent. When his bamboo pole told him he was in shallow water, he abandoned the raft for the shoreline, where he encountered humans hunting for fish, wild geese, and clams and dredging salt.

He …