Father of modern Chinese literature, Lu Xun, described it as a great analogy for human existence, and it was one of Mao Zedong's favourite stories. It has been told as a black-and-white movie, a time-travel fantasy, a US television series and a popular Japanese manga. And if all goes to plan, it will reach its cultural apogee - or nadir, depending on how you see it - as a Steven Spielberg movie in 2008. That's Journey to the West, the fairytale written by scholar Wu Cheng'en more than four centuries ago.
The misadventures of the Monkey King and his gang - monk Tripitaka (Tang Sanzang in Chinese) and fumbling deities Pigsy (Zhu Bajie) and Sandy (Sha Wujing) - provides everything that straightforward entertainment demands: a simple storyline (an expedition to India to find some Buddhist sutras) spiced up by episodes in which the group has to fend off attacks from evil beings. Initially a raucous deity hell-bent on wreaking havoc in the heavens, the Monkey King was condemned to a spell in the mortal realm, where he was taken under the wings of Tripitaka before redeeming himself and reaching divine enlightenment.
There are loyal adaptations aplenty, but typically Journey forms a basis from which directors launch their own quirky takes on existence. For every straightforward retelling - such as Fire Ball (below), the Golden Horse-winning Taiwanese animation that's screening as part of the International Children's Film Carnival - there's a Chinese Tall Story, Jeff Lau Chun-wai's high-octane fantasy that reinvents Tripitaka as a lovelorn monk (played by Nicholas Tse Ting-fung) who goes astray with a group of hip hop rogues.
In Lau's A Chinese Odyssey (1995), Stephen Chow Sing-chi plays the confused Monkey King anti-hero who zigzags his way through time to save his friends and his love. It's one of the most popular Hong Kong movies to have reached the mainland. Chow's popularity probably saved him from Journey's puritanical admirers. Many decried the Japanese version earlier this year (Fuji Television's Adventures of the Super Monkey) as sacrilege, for its depiction of the Monkey King as a raging psycho (not unlike Chow's rendition in parts) and Tripitaka as a woman.
Zhang Jinlai, the actor who made his name as the Monkey King in the definitive China Central Television series in the early 1980s, was quoted as saying that 'our cultural heritage is being ruined'. Zhang is travelling to the US to talk to Spielberg about his plans for the Hollywood remake.
With Tsui Hark also considering an adaptation of Journey, the scene is set for another showdown with the west.