“It’s storybook romantic,” says Keith Uchima, describing his Jade Monkey King, a three-act musical adaptation of the colorful Chinese folk myth Monkey. The hero is a supernatural creature who’s chosen by Buddha to accompany a monk making a pilgrimage to India. “They are joined by a pig and a martial-artist monk, and their adventures and fights against villains call for music, dance, and all sorts of pageantry.”
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Uchima first learned about this picaresque legend–which has enthralled generations of children in China, Japan, and Korea–while attending a songwriters’ convention in Los Angeles five years ago. “I was very intrigued by an animation short dubbed into English, so I went to a temple in Japantown and knocked on the door. A monk referred me to the book Monkey, which, I later found out, isn’t nearly as long as the original source, Journey to the West.” Monkey was written by a local bureaucrat, Wu Cheng-en (c. 1505-1580), during the Ming dynasty. The action’s set about 700 years earlier in the Tang dynasty, a time when literature was highly esteemed and Buddhist elements were permeating the native Confucianism and Taoism. The story focuses on a Taoist monk, Hsuan Tsang, who travels to India to bring back the scripture. His story is often read as an acknowledgment of the marriage of these religious philosophies in the ways of Buddha.
“I felt that as an Asian American I’m part of the American pop culture,” he explains. “While most of us Asian Americans involved in the production are paying homage to an old-world culture, we’re all part of America–just like the audience to whom we’re telling this quintessential Chinese story.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Nathan Mandell.
