Sun Shuyun - Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud

The real Xuanzang could not have avoided the Flaming Mountain when he was in Gaochang. It was the most striking feature of this oasis kingdom and it was right on the Silk Road. Just as Fat Ma and I were discussing it, I saw spiky rocks on the horizon. They grew taller, rising inexorably. They almost seemed to throb with their curious red as we drove nearer. I had read about the Flaming Mountain so many times and seen many pictures of it, but still I was amazed at its grandeur. The steep sides are criss-crossed with deep gullies of dark red stone; the mountain-tops make hectic zigzags against the blue sky. Under the blazing sun, it really does seem ready to burst into flames. It made me realize why it was the perfect backdrop for one of the most dramatic episodes in The Monkey King , firing the author’s imagination, mine and that of everyone who has read the novel throughout the centuries.

I decided to have my photo taken with the Flaming Mountain in the background. I could not return empty-handed from the land of my childhood dream that had been burning in my head for the past thirty years. But Fat Ma said no. I thought he did not want to get out of the jeep in the scorching sun, so we drove on. After another fifteen minutes, we left the main road, cruising on the gravel towards the foot of the mountain. Suddenly we screeched to a stop. ‘Photo time now!’ he declared proudly. ‘I have searched the whole mountain from end to end: this is the ideal spot.’ I thought it was very considerate of him to do it just for me but it turned out to be a more serious business matter. In Turfan as in the rest of China in the reform era, everything is about money. Fat Ma said they were having a Flaming Mountain fever right now – half a million people had visited Turfan the year before. ‘We should put a billboard on the road, saying “Ideal Photo Spot for the Flaming Mountain”,’ he said excitedly. ‘We will have a guard and charge fifty pence per photo. We will make a fortune.’ He seemed to be intoxicated by his dream of riches – or maybe it was just the heat.

Before I read Xuanzang’s biography the only thing I knew of him in Turfan was the Flaming Mountain story – and this is still true for most Chinese. I had no idea that it was here in Turfan that the real Xuanzang, by his courage and determination, gave his pilgrimage a solid chance of success. He arrived here penniless, with a warrant over his head, far from certain that he could survive the journey. Now he could carry on with every hope of fulfilling his dream. The king of Gaochang provided him with everything he would need: clothes to suit all weathers, one hundred ounces of gold and three piles of silver pieces, and five hundred rolls of satin and taffeta as donations to major monasteries. He was also given thirty horses, twenty-four servants and five monks to look after him as far as India and back. But most important of all, the king wrote state letters to be presented to the twenty-four different kingdoms along the way. In particular, he asked the Great Khan of the Western Turks, who controlled the whole of Central Asia at the time, to protect the Chinese monk. Xuanzang wrote these words that expressed all the elegance of his mind and his depth of feeling:

For all these favours, I feel ashamed of myself and do not know how to express my gratitude. Even the overflow of the Jiaohe River does not compare with your kindness, and your favour is weightier than the Pamir Mountains. Now I have no more worries for my journey … If I succeed in my purpose, to what shall I owe my achievements? To nothing but the king’s favour.

The contrast between fiction and reality could not be greater.

The Monkey King has hidden the real Xuanzang, but the fiction has an important role to play. Life for most people in China had always been oppressive. They were subjugated by hardship and tyranny and The Monkey King was cathartic, not just as a rich and colourful fantasy world, but as the story of a maverick spirit who symbolized what we could only dream of: rebellion. It was sheer magic. The thrill of reading it for the first time is still with me.

But it had another significance: it carried any number of Buddhist messages. I remember Grandmother trying to explain some of them to me. She said although the monkey could fly up to Heaven and dive into hell, slay dragons and subdue demons, he could also be arrogant, jealous, angry, greedy, selfish and harmful. That was why Guanyin gave him another name, Wukong , meaning ‘Understanding Emptiness’. Guanyin hoped the monkey would come to appreciate the limits of his power and the vanity of life. We even had a saying: ‘Mighty the monkey may be, but even with his 180,000-league jump, he can never escape from the palm of the Buddha.’ The monk, on the other hand, was kind, loving, selfless and compassionate. He had the Way – that was the secret of his power over the mighty monkey whom he kept under control simply by reciting the Heart Sutra. It did not make sense to me at the time. Now I can see what Grandmother meant. In fact, the last sentences of The Monkey King

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