ABSTRACT
One of the most beloved characters of the Chinese stage is the Monkey King, whose spectacular leaps and somersaults and irreverent humor have delighted theater audiences for centuries. Some of the finest actors in the traditional theater have specialized in this role, which requires extraordinary comic timing, acrobatic perfection, and a brilliant miming of real monkey behavior. The Monkey King and his friends turn up in children’s cartoons and comic books, in advertising, and in ordinary conversation throughout East Asia. They are an enduring part of Chinese and Chinese-diaspora popular culture, part of the fund of shared childhood experience on which many Chinese American writers have drawn. Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book takes the story of the Monkey King as its starting point, and in the mishaps of its protagonist, Wittman Ah Sing, there are many echoes of the Monkey King’s adventures.
