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An ancient Chinese fantasy and adventure story about a monkey, a pig, a monk, their master, and their white dragon horse traveling from China to India to fetch Buddhist scriptures. "Xi You Ji" is translated as "Journey to the West" or "Pilgrimage to the West." Sometimes people like to lump all three characters together and spell it as "Xiyouji." It is also romanized as "Hsi Yu Chi" and "Saiyuki" is what the Japanese call it.
The closest thing in Western literature to Xi You Ji is probably "The Canterbury Tales." Both were written about the same time, give or take a hundred years. And like "The Canterbury Tales," Xi You Ji gets quite bawdy and unbelievable: two men get pregnant in one of the stories and there are quite a number of jabs at corrupt monks. Needless to say when it was first published during the Ming Dynasty, most people regarded it as a bunch of nonsense. This story has been beloved by the Chinese for centuries. So much so that the main character, Sun Wukong (also known as the Monkey King or Son Goku) is an icon that often appears on packaging of snacks in China.
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