Bull Demon King 牛魔王
Bull Demon King (牛魔王, Niumo Wang) is one of the most recognizable demons in Journey to the West. In his youth, Sun Wu-Kong swore brotherhood with him and five other demon kings, and many years later the former brothers clashed at the Flaming Mountains: fire blocked the pilgrims' path, and only the magic fan of the Bull Demon King's wife could extinguish it. He appears only a few times in the novel, but it is he, along with his wife Princess Iron Fan and his son Red Kid, who got one of the book's most spectacular storylines — and a role in the first Chinese feature-length animated film.
The character predates the novel: the Bull Demon King is already mentioned in a Yuan dynasty drama about Erlang Shen and the mirror that imprisons demons. In Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West he is the eldest of the seven sworn demon brothers, a group that included Sun Wu-Kong (the sworn brotherhood is described in chapter 4), and he styles himself the "Great Sage Who Pacifies Heaven" (平天大圣). He holds mountain domains, has a wife — Princess Iron Fan — and a son — Red Kid — but he lives with another wife, the Jade-Faced Fox. His true form is a gigantic white bull.
His main episode spans chapters 59–61. To cross the Flaming Mountains, the pilgrims need Princess Iron Fan's fan. Sun Wu-Kong cunningly obtains it by taking on the Bull Demon King's own form, and the latter retaliates in kind: he transforms into Zhu Ba-Jie and snatches the fan back. The demon's battle with Tang Sanzang's disciples ends only when heavenly warriors come to the rescue: Nezha's fire wheel scorches the bull's horns, and the mirror of the Heavenly King Li Jing prevents him from transforming. Defeated, the Bull Demon King returns the fan.
On screen the Bull Demon King made his debut in the animated film by the brothers Wan Lai-Ming and James Wan Gu-Chan, Princess Iron Fan (1941) — the first Chinese feature-length animated film. Hong Kong cinema of the early 1950s made him the hero of Cantonese films — for example, The Battle Between Demon Girl and the Ox Devil (1950). In the CCTV series Journey to the West (1986) he was played by Wong Foo-Tong. The most expensive Bull Demon King was Aaron Kwok Fu-Sing in Cheang Pou-Soi's The Monkey King (2014), with Donnie Yen Ji-Dan as Sun Wu-Kong: the film's budget was 500 million yuan, and its box office in China exceeded one billion yuan.
In the novel the Bull Demon King is not so much an embodiment of evil as Sun Wu-Kong's former comrade who ended up on the other side. His story is also a family one: two wives, a demon son, a quarrel with a sworn brother — and this makes him one of the most "human" demons in the book. His influence has spread far beyond China: Mario's creator Shigeru Miyamoto said that the villain Bowser was partly inspired by the Bull Demon King.
