沙和尚

English (for the teacher)

Now, master and his two disciples travelled west for many days and came to a great river. Its muddy waves surged to the sky, and you couldn't see the far bank. On the bank stood a stone tablet carved with three big characters, "Flowing Sand River", and below them four lines of small writing: "Eight hundred li of flowing sand, three thousand fathoms of weak water. Even a goose feather will not float; even a reed flower sinks to the bottom."

While master and disciples were still reading it, the waves churned in the river and a monster leapt out: a shock of tangled red hair, two eyes as bright as lamps, nine skulls hanging round his neck and a precious staff in his hand; he whipped up a whirlwind and headed straight for the Tang Monk. Wukong quickly picked up his master and ran up a high slope. Bajie put down his carrying pole, raised his rake and went to meet the monster, and the two of them fought on the bank for twenty rounds without either one winning. Watching from the side, Wukong's fingers itched; he leapt over and brought his staff down on the monster's head, but the monster spun round and dived into the water.

Bajie grumbled: "Brother, what did you come for? A few more rounds and I'd have caught him." Wukong laughed: "Old Sun isn't much good in the water; you go down and lure him up, and I'll hit him on the bank." Bajie went into the water, fought the monster again for a while, pretended to be beaten and lured him up onto the bank. Once again Wukong was too quick to swing his staff, and the monster dived back into the water, and from then on he would not come up again. Bajie said: "Brother, one somersault takes you a hundred and eight thousand li, so why not carry Master across the river on your back?" Wukong said: "Master has an ordinary mortal body, as heavy as Mount Tai; how could I carry him across the river on my back? Besides, the road to the scriptures has to be walked step by step; even if we carried him over, he would never get the true scriptures."

At a loss, Wukong had no choice but to somersault to the South Sea to see the bodhisattva Guanyin. The bodhisattva said: "You monkey, you think you're so grand again, and you wouldn't say that you're guarding the Tang Monk. That monster in the river is one I converted myself, and I told him to wait there for the pilgrim. If you had told him straight away that you were the pilgrims from the East, he would never have fought you." With that, the bodhisattva called her disciple Huian, gave him a red gourd and told him: "Go with Wukong to the surface of the Flowing Sand River and just call 'Wujing', and he'll come out."

Huian came to the river and called loudly: "Wujing! The pilgrim has been here a long time; why haven't you submitted yet?" When the monster heard this, he hurried up out of the water, knelt before the Tang Monk and bowed: "Your disciple had eyes but couldn't see, and offended you, Master; please forgive me!"

He had once been the Curtain-Lifting General in heaven, but because he had dropped and broken a crystal cup at the Peach Banquet, the Jade Emperor had him given eight hundred strokes and banished him to this river, and every seven days a flying sword came to pierce his side. When the hunger was too much to bear, he often came out to eat people. He said: "Nine pilgrims once passed this way, and I ate them all. Other people's skulls sank when I threw them in the water, but these nine floated on the surface and would never sink. I thought it strange, so I strung them together and hung them round my neck for fun." Some say those nine pilgrims were the Tang Monk himself in his nine earlier lives.

The Tang Monk saw he was sincere and was delighted; he shaved his head himself, and because his surname was Sha, called him Sha Heshang, Sandy the monk. The bodhisattva had already given him a religious name: Sha Wujing. Huian had Wujing take the nine skulls from his neck and tie them together with rope, and set the red gourd in the middle, and sure enough they became a Dharma boat. The Tang Monk sat in the boat and crossed the Flowing Sand River safe and sound. When they reached the far bank, Huian took back the gourd, and the nine skulls turned into nine gusts of dark wind and vanished in an instant.

A master, three disciples and a white dragon horse: the pilgrims were all together at last. But on the road to the West, eighty-one trials still lay waiting for them.