Every kids in China knows the name Sun Wukong, the Monkey King from the 16th century classic fantasy book Journey to the West.

It’s a monkey conceived in a magic stone and was born into the world with total freedom and marvellous talents. With a little enlightenment of a Taoistic master, he learned the art of Tao and the secrets of immortality. He became the king of the monkeys and later on the king of all spiritual animals in the continent, and started a rebellion against the Taoistic imperial domination of the eastern heaven. He almost succeeded to overturn the heavenly empire and its corrupted system with the power of his alone, until the Buddha came to rescue from the western heaven and tricked him into a trap which is a mountain in the shape of Buddha’s own hand. Wukong was trapped under the mountain for 500 years until being released by the monk Tang Xuanzang who’s on the journey to the far west for the original Buddhist scriptures.

It’s a monkey conceived in a magic stone and was born into the world with total freedom and marvellous talents. With a little enlightenment of a Taoistic master, he learned the art of Tao and the secrets of immortality. He became the king of the monkeys and later on the king of all spiritual animals in the continent, and started a rebellion against the Taoistic imperial domination of the eastern heaven. He almost succeeded to overturn the heavenly empire and its corrupted system with the power of his alone, until the Buddha came to rescue from the western heaven and tricked him into a trap which is a mountain in the shape of Buddha’s own hand. Wukong was trapped under the mountain for 500 years until being released by the monk Tang Xuanzang who’s on the journey to the far west for the original Buddhist scriptures.

This feeling of downcast must have been following Xiong Liang for years since he was a boy and became one of the motivations for him to re-depict this story, but only to the point where it should’ve stopped. He provided Wukong, with his own power of painting and free will, full freedom again.

Xiong Liang is an award-winning Chinese illustrator and writer. He was shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2018