‘It’s the OG superhero story’: how Journey to the West changed the life of a watch influencer and marketplace founder
- Austen Chu, founder and CEO of Wristcheck, says Journey to the West is for him about the human character and speaks to a lot of aspects of human nature
- The super ambitious Monkey King character resonates most with what they’re doing at Wristcheck, he says – trying to do things that haven’t been done before
One of the great classical Chinese novels, Journey to the West, traditionally attributed to the 16th century poet Wu Cheng’en, tells the epic, mythologically tinged tale of Sun Wukong, aka the Monkey King, as he travels around Central Asia and India with a group of friends led by monk Tang Sanzang, retrieving sacred Buddhist texts.
Austen Chu, watch collector, influencer, founder and CEO of watch-trading marketplace Wristcheck, tells Richard Lord how it changed his life.
I was born in Hong Kong and went to Shanghai when I was around two years old. I’m pretty sure that every kid in China grows up knowing this story.
In my opinion it’s the OG superhero story, and it’s from Asia. The principles I learned from Journey to the West and what I took away from the story have stuck with me.
It’s ingrained in a lot of people’s lives, and it’s been part of my life since I was very young. It was on television shows, I learned it in school, and my grandparents and parents would read it to me.
My mum allowed me to spend time on the things that I liked. I was fascinated by mechanical objects, which plays into watches. And instead of having Barney the Dinosaur on TV, I’d have a Monkey King cartoon. I can see it vividly in my head.
