The Rise and Fall of Tianpeng

Tianpeng, the Heavenly Court’s Curtain-Raising General, was banished to the mortal realm after the scandalous “misconduct at the Moon Palace” incident that followed a wild drinking party. By mistake, he was reborn in a pig’s body, becoming Zhu Ganglie, a half-human, half-pig monster whose magic powers had greatly diminished. He claimed a mountain as his own and forcibly took Gao Cuilan as his wife, hoping to reclaim some dignity and pleasure in the mortal world. In the end, however, Sun Wukong subdued him, clamped a tightening spell band around his head, and gave him the name Bajie, sending him on the road to the Western Heaven to seek scriptures and atone for his sins.

Along the journey, Bajie is the “pig teammate” who is gluttonous, lustful, lazy, and cowardly, and who is always asking to quit the group. He carries a nine-toothed rake, a symbol of the glories and shame of his past, and clumsily struggles within the grand narrative laid out by gods and Buddhas. He yearns for the comforts of mortal life, fears demons and monsters, envies his senior brother’s skills, and schemes over the offerings mortals might provide. Yet, at crucial moments, with what little conscience he has left and the remnants of his instincts as a heavenly general, he clumsily protects his master and the scripture-seeking party.

After enduring eighty-one trials and completing his merits, Bajie is bestowed the title “Altar-Cleansing Envoy.” Gazing at the empty Buddhist altar and the wisps of cooking smoke rising from the mortal world, he finally realizes that true spiritual cultivation does not lie on Spirit Mountain. It lies along the 108,000-mile road through the mortal world, where he stumbled through a tangled web of greed, anger, delusion, pride, and doubt. The altar he tends holds not incense, but the extraordinary, comical tale of his struggles and ups and downs in this lifetime. This is the unconventional epic of a “hero,” a little man toyed with by fate who carved out a life in the narrow space between divinity and pig nature, Buddhist rules and human desire.