The Flaming Mountains and the Fan

The heat stopped them in the middle of the road.

It was not the heat of a summer noon. This heat made the road shimmer like water, and hat brims grew too hot to touch. The master and his three disciples, on their way west to fetch the scriptures, stopped short. Their sweat dried before it could run. Even the wind blew hot.

The old books say that about 60 li ahead stood the Flaming Mountains. The li is a traditional Chinese measure of distance. They lay right across the only road west and burned for 800 li, equally hot in every season. Not an inch of grass could grow around them. People said anyone reckless enough to cross them would melt away like water, even with a head of bronze and a body of iron.

Strangest of all, people still lived nearby. There were houses and kitchens, and a young man pushing a little cart, selling cakes. One of the disciples bought a cake. He was Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, the main character of the Chinese novel Journey to the West. He asked where rice flour for cakes could come from in a land that burned like this. To learn that, the young man answered, one had to pray to the Iron Fan Immortal.

The old man who owned the house where the pilgrims were resting told them the custom of the whole region. Once every ten years, the households pooled pigs, goats, chickens, geese, fruit and good wine. They chose people who washed themselves clean and traveled all the way to the immortal's mountain, to ask for a few waves of the fan. The round trip took a whole month. It covered about 1,450 li. Only after one round of wind and rain could the people sow and harvest. Then they waited another ten years.

It was called the plantain fan, made of a banana leaf. One wave, and the fire went out. Two waves, and the wind rose. Three waves, and the rain poured down. The keeper of the fan was Luocha, also called Princess Iron Fan, the wife of the Bull Demon King.

Wukong rolled up his sleeves and set off to borrow the fan.

The first time, he came to the mouth of her cave, put his palms together, greeted her most properly and asked to borrow it. Luocha refused. She still held an old grudge about her son. Words flew back and forth, and then she drew out the fan and waved it exactly once.

Wukong flew off like a dry leaf, tumbling through the wind all night long. Only at dawn did he fall, on Little Sumeru Mountain, more than 50,000 li from the Flaming Mountains. There the Bodhisattva Lingji gave him a Wind-Fixing Pill. Once he held it in his mouth, no wind could blow him away.

He went back. The princess waved the fan once. He stood still and laughed. She waved it twice more, and still he did not move. She retreated inside and bolted the door of the cave. He turned into a tiny bug, slipped in and pestered her until she gave up and handed over the fan.

Overjoyed, Wukong carried it off to the foot of the mountain and waved it once. The fire did not go out. It flared higher. He waved twice more, and the flames leapt up several times taller, licking at the hair on his legs. He had to turn and run.

It was a fake. Luocha had handed it over and let him carry it off, delighted with himself.

The local earth god appeared and told him two things. This fire came from a few bricks of a heavenly furnace for refining elixirs, kicked over long ago, with embers still glowing inside them. And to get the real fan, he would need the Bull Demon King. The king was in Moyun Cave on Jilei Mountain, more than 3,000 li away.

The second time, Wukong did not use the front door. He trailed the Bull Demon King in secret and stole his golden-eyed beast that could walk through water. Disguised as the king, he rode back to the old cave at an easy pace.

Luocha came out to greet him, delighted. As if it were a good joke, she told him how she had given that monkey a fake fan, so he would carry it off and make the fire even bigger. Wukong nodded, then casually asked where the real fan was kept. She took a tiny fan, no bigger than a leaf, out of her mouth and taught him how to use it. Press the seventh red thread on the handle and say a short spell, and the fan grows one zhang and two chi long. A zhang was an old Chinese measure of length.

With the real fan in his hand, Wukong wiped his face, took back his own shape, called out so she could see who he really was, and left.

But when the Bull Demon King got home and heard, he played the very same trick back. He took the shape of Zhu Bajie and met Wukong halfway. He said their master had sent him to help carry the fan. Wukong was in high spirits, so he handed it over at once. The other shook himself back into his own form and held up the fan, roaring with laughter.

Wukong had been fooled by the very trick he had just used. The second attempt had come to nothing.

The third time was different, because he did not go alone. The real Bajie came with his rake, and the earth god showed the way. The chase turned into a contest of transformations. One side became a bird, and the other became a bigger bird. One became a deer, and the other became a tiger. They chased each other all over the mountain, and neither gave in.

Only when Heavenly King Li and Nezha came down on clouds to help did the Bull Demon King finally stop. Nezha threaded his demon-binding cord through the king's nose and led him away, just like leading a buffalo in the fields. The Bull Demon King begged them not to harm him, and he agreed to follow the way of the Buddha. The whole chase ended with a demon king led by the nose before a crowd of gods and immortals.

Then the cave door opened. Luocha stepped out, holding the plantain fan in both hands, one zhang and two chi long. She gave it to Wukong herself. After everything, she called him by a name that sounded strange, Uncle Sun. She offered him the fan so he could finish his task.

The first time, he was tricked. The second time, he did the tricking. The third time, no one snatched anything from anyone. The fan was placed in his hands, along with the way to use it.

Wukong stood before the mountains that burned for 800 li and waved. One wave, and the fire sank low. Two waves, and a cool wind rose. Three waves, and the sky changed color. Then Luocha, standing nearby, told him that to put out the root of the fire for good, he had to wave it 49 times without stopping. After that, the fire would never flare up again. He waved it 49 times. Rain poured down. Where there was fire, it fell in torrents. Where there was none, the sky stayed clear. The water soaked slowly into ground that for years had not fed an inch of grass.

The prize at the end of this adventure was not a victory over a demon. It was a fire put out, and a whole region that could lay seed in the ground again without waiting ten years at a time.

Then Wukong gave the fan back to Luocha. If he kept it, he said, the world would mock him for breaking his word. She said a spell that shrank it to the size of a leaf and put it in her mouth. Then she quietly went away to live in seclusion and spiritual practice.

This tale comes from Journey to the West, a novel written in China in the 16th century and traditionally said to be by Wu Cheng'en. People in Vietnam know the book so well that its name for the place has become an everyday phrase. They say Hỏa Diệm Sơn for a summer noon under a tin roof, when the heat scorches the face.

And the road was still there. Where no one had dared come near before, there was only wet ground now, a few thin wisps of steam rising, and the four pilgrims passing quietly by.