An­ge­lo Je­didi­ah

Sto­ry­telling is a skill Trin­bag­o­ni­ans have mas­tered. Be­yond our tal­ent for re­count­ing a good “bac­cha­nal scene,” our lo­cal and Caribbean folk­lore are unique­ly rich, cap­tur­ing dif­fer­ent as­pects of our cul­ture and his­to­ry. But what if we could bring these sto­ries to life—cre­at­ing a state-of-the-art tourist at­trac­tion?

Dur­ing my tour of Chi­na, I was told that my next stop, Huai’an in Jiang­su Province, would in­clude a vis­it to a ma­jor theme park—Jour­ney to the West. I was in­trigued, not so much by the name, but be­cause it sound­ed odd­ly fa­mil­iar.

My cu­rios­i­ty quick­ly turned in­to child­like ex­cite­ment as I re­alised that the sprawl­ing 100-acre amuse­ment park ahead was a re­al-life recre­ation of the fa­mous Chi­nese nov­el Jour­ney to the West. In re­cent years, a video game adap­ta­tion has al­so sparked glob­al in­ter­est.

The last time I picked up the com­ic book adap­ta­tion of Jour­ney to the West was when I was 13, at one of our lo­cal pub­lic li­braries. To me, it was just an en­ter­tain­ing read, fol­low­ing the Mon­key King and oth­er char­ac­ters on an ex­cit­ing pil­grim­age—com­plete with su­per­pow­ers and fight scenes, of course. At that age, I had no rea­son to dive deep­er in­to its back­ground or mean­ing.

But for the Chi­nese, this 16th-cen­tu­ry mytho­log­i­cal nov­el and its many adap­ta­tions hold deep cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance.

When Jour­ney to the West au­thor Wu Cheng’en died, his man­u­scripts were dis­cov­ered and pub­lished lat­er, hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on Chi­nese cul­ture and their be­lief sys­tems, pro­mot­ing lessons on self-dis­ci­pline, friend­ship, and en­light­en­ment.

The mo­ment I en­tered the park, along with hun­dreds of oth­er guests, it felt as if I’d been trans­port­ed to the misty clouds of the sev­enth-cen­tu­ry Tang Dy­nasty, close­ly mir­ror­ing the fan­tas­ti­cal en­vi­ron­ments de­scribed in the nov­el. There were no vis­i­ble speak­ers, yet cul­tur­al mu­sic filled each area, per­fect­ly suit­ed to the set­ting and at­mos­phere. The out­door space was dom­i­nat­ed by moun­tain and val­ley land­scapes, with char­ac­ters like the Mon­key King, Pigsy, and oth­ers, ful­ly cos­tumed, roam­ing the park, in­ter­act­ing with guests just as they would in the sto­ry.

While the in­door and out­door rides were re­mark­able, each of­fer­ing a new ad­ven­ture in the Mon­key King’s vivid world, it was the im­pres­sive Chi­nese tech­nol­o­gy that tru­ly stood out.

Holo­graph­ic shows, mixed with live per­for­mances, were con­tin­u­al­ly shown, tak­ing guests through var­i­ous bat­tles and pop­u­lar scenes from the book. Those who had not read the book could eas­i­ly fol­low along, even with a lan­guage bar­ri­er. Vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty was al­so part of the mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy used to bring tra­di­tion­al folk­lore to life.

And if that wasn’t enough to make you feel in­clud­ed in the au­thor’s thoughts about the sto­ry and char­ac­ters, in­door rides of­fered an im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence to learn more.

Al­though you nev­er tru­ly leave the ground, the im­pres­sive project and 4DX ef­fects would eas­i­ly make one think they were fly­ing along­side the Mon­key King, hun­dreds of miles above the earth. I had no choice but to hold on for dear life.

At the end of the day, a grand pa­rade fea­tured all the char­ac­ters, fol­lowed by a 20-minute wa­ter, light, and fire­works dis­play that recre­at­ed one of the most pop­u­lar bat­tle scenes with the Mon­key King.

Here in the Caribbean, we still have yet to trans­form our oral sto­ry­telling in­to a per­ma­nent and im­pres­sive spec­ta­cle, aside from some mu­se­ums, the­atri­cal per­for­mances, and sea­son­al show­ings.

While build­ing a state-of-the-art amuse­ment park may not be fea­si­ble right now, we should ex­plore more ways to keep our folk­lore tales and his­toric char­ac­ters alive for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

There could be ways for us to have spaces ded­i­cat­ed to pop­u­lar folk tales like La Di­a­b­lesse, Pa­pa Bois, or Shango, to name a few that fol­low the ad­ven­tures of lo­cal folk char­ac­ters and the pos­i­tive life lessons they learn along the way.

This could in­clude cre­at­ing in­ter­ac­tive cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ences, such as fes­ti­vals, im­mer­sive ex­hibits, or dig­i­tal sto­ry­telling plat­forms that bring these sto­ries to life—not on­ly dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

In do­ing so, we not on­ly ho­n­our our tra­di­tions but al­so en­sure that these nar­ra­tives con­tin­ue to in­spire and con­nect us, both lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly.