The Three Beautiful Daughters

This book is, based on chapters 22 and 23 of Journey to The West, an epic novel written in the 16th Century by Wu Chen'en. Journey to The West is loosely based on an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng (called Xuanzang and Sanzang in earlier books), 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 texts of Buddhism. Over the course of the book the band of travelers, face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood. Each book in our Journey to the West series covers a short section of the original 2,000-page novel. In this, the 9th book in our series, we meet another new disciple: the river-dwelling monster Sha Wujing (literally, "Sand Aware of Purity" or "Sand Seeking Purity") who was once the Curtain Raising Captain but was, banished from heaven by the Yellow Emperor for breaking an extremely valuable cup during a drunken visit to the Peach Festival. Later, the band of pilgrims arrive at a beautiful home seeking a simple vegetarian meal and a place to stay for the night. What they encounter instead is a lovely and wealthy widow and her three even more lovely daughters. This meeting is, of course, much more than it appears to be, and it turns into a test of commitment and virtue for all of the pilgrims, especially for Zhu Bajie, the lazy and lustful pig-man. Zhu's life is a constant battle against his appetites and desires, and in this book, he faces his biggest battle yet. In the main body of the book, each page of Chinese characters is matched with a facing page of pinyin. This is unusual for Chinese novels but we feel it's important. By including the pinyin, as well as a full English version and glossary at the end, we hope that every reader, no matter what level of mastery they have of the Chinese language, will be able to understand and enjoy the story we tell here. Careful readers will notice that the English translation sometimes doesn't exactly match the Chinese. This is because we've tried to express the story in both languages in the most natural style, and sometimes it's just not possible (or desirable) to translate word-for-word from one language to the other.