Hello 大家周末好！相信很多人都听说了最近大热的游戏 <黑神话·悟空>，我们也想借此机会用英文来聊聊大家耳熟能详的《西游记》，而在下一期将专门用来讲孙悟空。

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Weekend English Club. Today I want to talk about a very famous Chinese story which I’m sure you all know. In English it is called Journey to the West, and in Chinese 西游记. This novel was published more than 500 years ago during the Ming dynasty and is still one of the most famous pieces of literature of East Asia.

The novel is actually based on a real story, that of the journey of a Chinese Buddhist monk to India in the 7th century. His name was Xuanzang, a monk from the Jingtu temple in Xi'an and he went to India to look for Buddhist writings to bring back to China. He travelled through India for 13 years before returning to China with much new knowledge and recorded the story of his journey in his own book.

Journey to the West takes his story and adds a lot of fantasy elements to it. The Buddha gives the monk the task to go to India and to help him he receives three companions for protection: Sun Wukong the Monkey King, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing. They ride a White Dragon Horse to travel to India and have to work together to succeed on their journey.

The novel is strongly influenced by Chinese mythology, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, and this tells you a lot about which ideas were popular back when the book was written. I think it is a great adventure story with interesting characters and it is still very popular. I once watched a Hong Kong movie from 1995 called A Chinese Odyssey which is also based on the story of Journey to the West, and just last month a new video game was published about the Monkey King Sun Wukong. Next week I will talk about him a bit more.

• Novel：小说
• Publish：出版，发行
• Pieces：片，块，段；作品（复数）
• Literature：文学，文学作品
• Buddhist monk：佛教僧侣
• India：印度
• Bring back：带回
• Record：记录
• Fantasy：幻想，想象
• Elements：要素，元素（复数）
• Companions：同伴（复数）
• Succeed：成功，达成
• Mythology： 神话
• Adventure：冒险，奇遇
• Characters：人物角色（复数）

主播：Daniel

校对：nan_nan