Reality Is Not a Fairy Tale

I previously mentioned in After A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora’s Box that I am an ordinary person. A large part of my motivation for watching films comes from female characters, contrast cuteness, adorableness, and intelligence. I came half for that one look from Zixia [Athena Chu], a scene I have always remembered.

So if you insist on asking whether I could still accept Zixia becoming Zhu Bajie, I think I probably could not.

But I previously argued against myself. In After The God of Cookery I wrote:

When Stephen is first kissed by Mok, he frantically wipes his mouth in front of a mirror. Even after learning from people on the street that she had liked him for a long time, Stephen still cannot accept it. In truth, my own mind initially followed his. I wavered a little, but not enough to shake the foundation of my attachment to looks.

Only when the thing itself was torn open and shown to me did I finally, in an instant, escape that pit of appearances. A wave of regret came over me, and I remembered her earlier bowl of rice and the time she shielded a knife with her hand. Only then did I truly recognize what was in my heart. Being overly concerned with looks is an illness. Being born to prefer cute things is not wrong; cute things make people feel close to them and fond of them. But if we stop at a first impression, perhaps we can never say that we have truly come to know someone further. The director tears this truth open for us through Mok’s “death.” It is masterful, with no unnecessary explanation: a slip of paper, a song, and finally a bowl of rice. Nothing is simply handed over at once; it advances layer by layer.

I can accept mediocrity. I can accept flaws. But I still have my limits, and this is one I cannot bear.

Unless an existing thing is torn open and shown to someone, that person finds it difficult to truly face what they really feel inside. Just as Zixia is captured and waits for her destined hero to arrive on seven-colored clouds and marry her, Joker is elsewhere preparing a wedding with Jingjing.

Jingjing later runs away because she has seen Joker’s heart: she is no longer the person he loves most.

The words of Patriarch Puti elsewhere make this clear as well.

“You kept calling Jingjing, Jingjing in your sleep—eighty-eight times.”

“Really?”

“Oh, and another name: Zixia. You called that seven hundred and eighty-four times first.”

---

“Last night you called Zixia’s name seven hundred and eighty-five times. One more than before.”

Meanwhile, after putting on the Golden Hoop, Ma Lau [the Cantonese pronunciation of “monkey”] refuses to acknowledge Zixia. He insists that he is the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, Sun Wukong.

Though he has the memories and even carries Zixia’s bracelet, he still denies it absolutely.

Only after Zixia blocks Bull King with her body and falls does he hold Zixia’s hand tightly. But the more he does so, the harder the hoop tightens. Its tightening cannot be hidden.

Answer to proposition one:

• People can never fully recognize their own hearts. They often deceive themselves unconsciously, or have some bitter reason or another.
• Perhaps only after losing her would one know the weight of that Zixia who possessed Zhu Bajie.

The camera returns to the first time Joker pulls out the Purple-Green Sword. Zixia asks him to kiss her, but he ignores her, thinking she is being unreasonable or simply not taking it seriously.

Joker never gives her that kiss in the end.

Perhaps that is what he owes her.

In Pandora’s Box, he is the one who takes the initiative, but loses it immediately afterward.

Joker and Jingjing

But in Cinderella, Joker never holds Zixia like that from beginning to end. After becoming Ma Lau, he cannot even hold her hand.

Yet after Ma Lau travels through time again using Pandora’s Box, he meets another pair of “Zixia” and “Joker.”

This “Joker” is not proactive either.

And this time Ma Lau possesses “Joker.”

He returns Joker’s kiss to Zixia.

Proposition two:

I now find this proposition strange. It is like saying that separation is sad because separation exaggerates the sadness of separation.

Let us divide this into two stages.

One is before loss, and one is after loss.

Before loss: although Joker unconsciously repeats Zixia’s name so many times in his dreams, in reality he stubbornly refuses to admit that he likes her and instead prepares to marry Jingjing.

When Zixia is not beside him, I think deliberately ignoring the value of something like this produces a similar restless anxiety. After Zixia is captured, Joker often loses his temper at Puti and the others, saying that what he feels for Zixia is only guilt for having abandoned her.

When Zixia is beside him, Joker truly does not recognize it. He really believes he likes Jingjing more. Yet sometimes he vaguely feels that something is wrong. So unless one asks the true heart from within, as Zixia or Jingjing does, one will not know. When we possess something, Joker—or I—most easily ignores what the heart truly thinks of it.

After loss: does sadness exaggerate the original value of something, creating the feeling that after losing it, one has nothing at all?

It does, if we frame the question that way. As mentioned before, before loss, one usually cannot recognize the value something beside them has for their true heart. It is easy to feel that it was all one had.

What remains besides what was lost?

If the director had stopped only with Zixia—if Ma Lau simply went mad after losing her—then the film would have fallen into an overworked cliché. I discussed this when talking about love as a theme in After A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora’s Box.

But Ma Lau’s attitude afterward is different. Wearing the Golden Hoop means he cannot indulge desire, but it does not mean Ma Lau no longer has desire; the tightening hoop when Zixia dies proves that. Some people overinterpret this and assume that it is one thing for Joker to date a demon, but that after becoming Sun Wukong, remaining unable to let go of emotion would misunderstand Sun Wukong.

Here I need to explain a little. Their group is still on the road west; they have not obtained the scriptures or achieved fruition. When Tang Sanzang passes through the Kingdom of Women, he even says:

“In this life I have already promised myself to the imperial brother and the Buddha.” [That is, he promised Emperor Tang that he would seek scriptures in the West.]

“If there is another life…” [This itself shows that Tang Sanzang’s heart was moved. Far from damaging his characterization, it makes him fuller. It undeniably shows that Tang Sanzang is human. Even with profound Buddhist law and lotus flowers coming from his mouth, he is still human.]

I think Sun Wukong is similar. Zixia is his ordeal in the Kingdom of Women. Tang Sanzang lets go through his own strength, which is clearly more elevated. Sun Wukong, meanwhile, says farewell by pretending not to know her and through death.

But the scene of Zixia’s death, together with the kiss that Sun Wukong gives Zixia after possessing Joker in another time, makes me feel that Joker is one side of Sun Wukong, while Sun Wukong too is a human being—not a scripture-seeking machine without emotion, desire, anger, or grievance, one who cannot feel wronged even when excluded. And the film never denies the legitimacy of the journey west, or its positive effect on Sun Wukong. After returning the kiss through possession, Sun Wukong finally looks at them on the tower, then catches up with his master. It is as though he has let go of every attachment, and from then on devotes himself wholeheartedly to Buddhism.

Proposition three:

So in the end, Sun Wukong does not feel disparaged. It instead resembles an ordeal in the Kingdom of Women. After obtaining the scriptures and attaining fruition, that is ultimately still wrapped in people’s beautiful imagination. Whether, after becoming the Victorious Fighting Buddha, Sun Wukong must cut off his Joker side and become entirely emotionless and desireless is part of people’s beautiful imagination of immortals; I cannot judge it. But I at least think that whoever a person is in reality, they are always human first.

Notes:

• Ma Lau: the Cantonese pronunciation of “monkey.” I use it here to prevent people from taking this out of context and saying that Sun Wukong simply cannot let go. I only change Ma Lau back to Sun Wukong after Sun Wukong lets go; only then, perhaps, can he be called Wukong.

Screenshots from an LSP:

Athena Chu’s beauty is dynamic.

When I try to capture it in screenshots, seven or eight tenths of it are lost.

Beauty is not in facial features or anything like that, but in a spirit overflowing from the eyes.