Sun Wukong
mythical character from Journey to the West
Sun Wukong (Chinese: 孫悟空, Mandarin pronunciation: [swə́n ûkʰʊ́ŋ]), also known as the Monkey King, is a literary and religious figure best known as one of the main characters in the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. In the novel, Sun Wukong is an intelligent monkey (likely a rhesus macaque or a golden snub-nosed monkey) born from a stone who acquires supernatural powers through Taoist practices and consuming heavenly victuals. After rebelling against heaven, he is imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha. Five hundred years later, he accompanies the monk Tang Sanzang riding on the White Dragon Horse and two other disciples, Zhu Bajie and Sha Heshang, on a journey to obtain Buddhist sutras in the West or Western Paradise, where Buddha and his followers dwell.
Sun Wukong possesses many abilities. He has supernatural strength and is able to support the weight of two heavy mountains on his shoulders while running "with the speed of a meteor". He is extremely fast, able to travel 108,000 li (54,000 km, 34,000 mi) in one somersault. He has vast memorization skills and can remember every monkey ever born. As king of the monkeys, it is his duty to keep track of and protect every monkey. Sun Wukong acquires the 72 Earthly Transformations, which allow him to access 72 unique powers, including the ability to transform into animals and objects.
“Sun Wukong” enters the record as mythical character from Journey to the West. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wukong, mythical and character can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11773777. VIAF identifies the subject as 305341394. The Library of Congress control number is no2015054789. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sun Wukong” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.