The Journey to the West in Easy Chinese

<p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Journey to the West </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>is probably the most famous and best-loved novel in China and is considered one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature. The original Chinese novel written by Wu Chen'en in the 16th century s over a half million Chinese characters long and uses a vocabulary of over 4000 different Chinese words many of which are archaic and virtually unknown to modern readers. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>This book is not a literal translation of the original </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Journey to the West</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>. Rather it's a retelling of the story in Simplified Chinese for people who are learning the Chinese language but would not be able to read the story in its original form. It is a compilation of the entire series of 31 books written by Jeff Pepper and translated by Xiao Hui Wang.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The books start off relatively easy and gradually increase in complexity. For example the first book </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Rise of the Monkey King</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> covers the events in the first two chapters of the novel and uses a vocabulary of just 507 words. The second book </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Trouble in Heaven</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> covers the next two chapters and uses only 431 words. Each chapter adds on the average about 30 new words and so by the time you finish the final book </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The Last Trial</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> you will have seen over two thousand different Chinese words. This is less than half of the vocabulary used in the original novel.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Free audiobook versions of all 31 books presented here are available on YouTube on the Imagin8 Press channel. You can use these to listen to a native Chinese speaker tell the story while you follow along with the text.</span></p>