What monsters are there in Journey to the West?

In order to highlight the perils of the "81 difficulty" and the Monkey King's miraculous powers, Journey to the West arranged many troublemakers on the Western Heaven Road, mainly animal monsters.

These monsters include: the tiger spirit, bison spirit and bear spirit in Shuangcha Mountain, the bear monster in black wind mountain (accepted by Guanyin Bodhisattva as the mountain protector), Huang Fengguai in Huang Fengling Mountain (the mouse spirit at the foot of Buddha Mountain), the lion monster in the infinite country (the mount of Manjusri Bodhisattva), and Hong Haier (who later became a good boy of Guanyin Bodhisattva) in the fire cloud cave of Kusongjian Mountain.

Gui Jing of Heishui River (nephew of the Dragon King of the East China Sea), Luli big beetle (deer), Yang Lixian (antelope), Tiger force big fairy (tiger), goldfish monster of Tongtianhe River (goldfish in the lotus pond of Guanyin Bodhisattva), green cow monster of Jindou Mountain (Taishang Laojun Mountain), and scorpion essence of Pipa cave that poisoned enemy mountain.

Before talking about the types of monsters in The Journey to the West, let's talk about what monsters in The Journey to the West mean in the ancient world view. Sima Qian's "Shi Jia after Liu Ji" once said: "Scholars talk a lot without ghosts and gods, and their words have substance."

The so-called "thing" does not refer to the substance that people often say corresponds to "spirit", but refers to monsters or monsters transformed from animals, plants and utensils. Animals and plants or inanimate objects in the material world are endowed with some special abilities in imagination with the growth of age, that is, people often say "old and refined" and "old and demon", so monsters or monsters are also called monsters or goblins or demons.