I have a thing for the monkey king.
Part of it is because he’s one of the early superheroes I remember from my Chinese youth. Much like young American children were excited about Superman or Batman’s next adventure, I still have a graphic novel of the monkey king from my youth, even though it’s entirely in Chinese and I can’t read any of it anymore. Imagine if instead of the Marvel and DC universe, your pantheon of superheroes was limited to essentially one major character.
I dressed as the monkey king one year for Halloween, even though I had to explain it to everyone I ran into.
I went and saw the mediocre children’s movie The Forbidden Kingdom last year because it had the monkey king as part of its main storyline.
I bought the relatively good graphic novel American Born Chinese after flipping through the first few pages and seeing references to the monkey king.
It’s one of the few Chinese childhood things that I distinctly remember. There’s one especially vivid memory I have of riding in the back of my parents car, reading a monkey king comic. I started feeling extremely nauseous and eventually barfed on my book. I was very upset and loved the book so much that I didn’t want to throw it away, despite the fact (or perhaps my childhood mind couldn’t process) that the book was soaked and would always smell a bit like vomit.
That’s the power the monkey king had (and still has) over me.