The Hungry Pig A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 1200 Word Vocabulary Level

"The Hungry Pig" is the 8th book in the "Journey to the West" series of stories by Jeff Pepper and Xiao Hui Wang. Other titles include "Rise of the Monkey King", "The Immortal Peaches" and "The Young Monk".This book is part of the Journey to the West series of stories for students learning to read Chinese. It is based on the epic 16th century novel of the same name by Wu Chen'en. The novel is loosely based on an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangsheng (formerly called Xuanzang), who traveled from the Chinese city of Chang'an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned 17 years later with priceless knowledge and spiritual texts. Over the course of the book Tangsheng and his companions face the 81 tribulations that Tangsheng had to endure to attain Buddhahood.. In this, the 8th book in our series, we meet the pig-man known as Zhu Bajie, who becomes Tangseng's second disciple. Zhu is the junior disciple, having joined the Tang monk's service after Sun Wukong.In his previous life, Zhu was the Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds , responsible for the Jade Emperor's entire navy and 80,000 sailors. But unable to control his appetites, he got drunk at a festival and attempted to seduce the Goddess of the Moon. She reported this to the Jade Emperor, who furiously banished him to earth. As he plunged from heaven to earth he ended up in the womb of a sow (or, in some versions of the story, in the bottom of a pig well), and was reborn as a man-eating pig monster. This book tells the story of how Zhu was married to a farmer's daughter, fought with Sun Wukong, and ended up joining Tangsheng and Sun Wukong in their journey to the Western Heaven.