Monkey King (Journey to the West)

Every kid in China can tell you the story about a courageous monkey named WuKong who goes on a journey to the west with a monk, a pig, a fish monster, and a white horse. Seldomly explored are the queer implications in this classic story--from the asexual nature of the monkey's birth to his transformative identity that doesn't quite fit into the cis-hetero narrative of a traditional Chinese tale. Many interpretations of the stories later, I revisited the tale as someone who also traveled westward––as an immigrant; and instead of the geographical west (which referred to India in the story), I traveled to the "Occidental" as someone from the "Oriental".