#there being so many versions of sun wukong out there is lore accurate

[royaltea000]

Me when I’m in a being coerced into parenthood competition and my opponent is sun wukong

[the-monkey-ruler]

I recently got my friend to start watch Lego Monkie Kid and as we’ve been watching it I’ve been explain Journey To The West to him so he has more info and context for what’s happening in the show (even if everything is not jttw accurate) I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain Erlang to him but I don’t know enough about the guy to really do that could you share some info and cool facts about him?

I would not being doing the man justice even if I were to write him a 50-page essay going into his lore, history, impact, and overall importance to the Chinese mythos. But I shall try to sum it up in a tumble post.

Erlang Shen is one of, if not THE, greatest hero of Heaven and arguably the strongest god in the pantheon. His power and skill are only matched by his intelligence and merit. As such he is the perfect rival and sworn brother of Sun Wukong. An amazing foil to the character (I have talked about their foils here and here and here would even recommend looking at these posts if you want more information about him!)

He is a god with a wide range of responsibilities, including the god of water, the god of hunting, the god of national protection, the god of Cuju, the god of drama, the god of children's protection, the god of farming, etc. He has MANY legends that cover his origins (one being that he is the son of an engineer and helped create waterways) but his most popular legend is without a doubt the one highlighted in Lotus Lantern where he is the son of an unsanctioned marriage between a human Yang Tianyou and a goddess Yunhua Tiannu. This was the most popular version of his mythos, always spread in popularity because of FSYY and Xiyouji, thus further solidifying this as a most well-known and widely accepted background.

Sadly, when Heaven found out about the marriage they attacked in arrested his mother leading to his elder brother Yang Jiao and father being killed. Erlang and his younger sister Yang Chan were able to escape death or capture but his mother Yunhua was put under a mountain for her crimes of abandoning her post and hiding a family. His sister Chan and himself escaped and trained under an immortal master and in a short amount of time, while he was still in his youth as a young man, he became powerful enough to fight his Uncle the Jade Emporer (please keep this in mind that in a few years he fought WITH THE JADE EMPORER to save his mother). Details get fuzzy here as some legends have it that she was saved and others say she died in the crossfire but personally, I think that he freed his mother from her imprisonment.

It is because of this attack that he is known a bit as a rebel and follows his own sense of justice. He never involves himself in conflicts unless he is personally asked or he personally believes that the offender is in the wrong. He understands when Heaven must be questioned but also personally has experienced what it means to break Heaven's laws, seeing how his own mother broke Heaven's rules and this crime led to the death of his father and brother. He is always considered to be one of the most loyal and trustworthy heroes in myth as people worship him for such reasons.

It’s only really when the Lotus Lantern myth that was created far later in his mythos does he get to play the antagonist where his own sister Yang Chan commits the same crime as their mother by marrying a human, abandoning her post, having a child and hiding it. And Erlang has to be in the same role that his uncle was and face the issue of punishing his sister for the crime their mother committed. He leaves her husband and son alive while putting his sister under a mountain and guarding her and this really could show a greater depth of his character how he never really processed his father and brother's death and rather continues the cycle of abuse, which I think could be a very interesting conversation. It makes him really multifaceted in how he responds to seeing his sister repeating their mother's crimes and him resenting his own godhood and what trauma it has caused him. That is getting into my own personal interpretation of the character but in either case, he gets defeated by his nephew Liu Chenxiang (also known to be Wukong's disciple in later interpretations) and his sister freed.

But in regards to Erlang's connection in Xiyouji we see that Wukong is supposed to be in the wrong at the start of the novel. While yes he was being given a lower rank and not invited to the peach party he still trashed the party, ate all the peaches, ate all the immortal pills, drank most of the immortal wine, and waged war on heaven. You can have your own take on right or wrong in this case but Wukong was trying to do all this for his own needs, he wasn't trying to change an oppressive system, rather he was trying to be IN CHARGE of that oppressive system, claiming he wanted to be the new Jade Emporer. This was not a rebellion to put a new order in place, but Wukong forcefully tried to be the head of the same order that was 'oppressing' (I say that loosely) him. (please note that this has changed with modern media to show Wukong as a freedom fighter but this is a newer interpretation). Erlang was never put in charge of the fight against Wukong but rather it was a Hail Mary hope because Erlang Shen could have chosen to deny the order if he didn’t see that it was fair.

Erlang was not going to get involved until Guanyin herself had to convince the Jade Emporer to swallow his pride and ask his nephew. Erlang doesn't get involved in heaven's conflicts easily and must be addressed personally if he were to get involved, and even THEN he has the power to deny the Jade Emporer if he sees fit. But Erlang agrees to fight Wukong, not because he was paid to do so, but because it is believed that he does it out of his own sense of justice and believes Wukong is genuinely in the wrong in this war. They have a battle of equal strength, both pushing their 72 transformation abilities to the limits, the only two in all of heaven with such powers and such the only two in heaven that could fight each other. And while it is hard to say who would win, Laozi used the diamond snare in the middle of the battle to capture Wukong and Erlang and Wukong's battle came to an inconclusive draw.

It is the next time that Wukong and Erlang meet in Xiyouji during the Nine Heads Demons fight and Wukong calls Erlang his sworn brother, saying that he has a huge debt to him. It is believed that Wukong is thanking Erlang to sparing his family on Flower Fruit Mountain instead of following the Nine Generations Rule. This rule has it that any criminal's family was to be executed with the criminal as well and Wukong adopting all his subjects as his family would understand that all 47,000 of his monkeys would also sadly be killed when he was to be executed. The punishment for heavier crimes would not only kill your family, but also to destroy your home and salt the earth, your immediate neighbors would be punished, and even the ministers responsible for the region would be punished and demoted.

However, while Erlang Shen did burn Flower Fruit Mountain we saw that not all of Wukong's family died, meaning that Erlang went against Heaven's law and instead spared what family he could. While you can make your own judgments about the burning, Wukong seems to understand that his family was meant for complete annihilation but saw that rather many of his monkeys were spared and he still had a home to come back to. Whether this is because Erlang Shen knew what it was like to lose a family or that he thought that the Nine Generation Rule was too harsh is hard to say. But in any case, Wukong shows great thanks to Erlang to going against the order and calls him brother in their latest interaction. We rarely get to see gods being in an antagonist role and seeing how both Sun Wukong and Erlang Shen can play both hero and villain depending on what kind of story they are shows not only the complexity and depth of the characters but also shows that these are the most humane gods that are in the heavens, and also why I think they are some of the most iconic, and still beloved figures in media.

In short, Erlang Shen is to be seen as a great and just hero but also is allowed his own human flaws and is just as complex as Wukong if I can so say. He has gone through many changes but his most popular interpretations of him have him show his human side again and again, a god that is to be the most powerful but can never escape that he is a creation of an illegal union. That not matter how high he is in the heavens he never stops being one of the most human gods.