BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Three decades ago, TV director Yang Jie created the Monkey King, the first, if not only, hero of millions of Chinese children.

Aged 88, the director passed away on Saturday. "Together with her, my childhood is gone," said a web user Gudurenaixing on Sina Weibo.

Innumerable people are grieving Yang, whose 25-episode TV adaption of "Journey to the West" in 1986 has for decades remained the best adaption of the classic fiction and one of the most watched TV dramas.

AS DIFFICULT AS THE PILGRIMAGE

Yang was born in 1929 in Macheng City in central China's Hubei Province. She worked as a newscaster in Qingdao, Shandong Province, during wartime, announcing liberation of the city in 1949.

She became a TV director in 1980, and began her working on "Journey to the West."

"It was as difficult as the pilgrimage to the west," she once said in an interview.

The story, based on the real pilgrimage of Buddhist monk Xuanzang in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) to central Asia and India, is a myth of Taoist and Buddhist philosophy.

The project sounded ambitious but, at a time when China just started reform and opening up, Yang's team was short of money.

Salaries for actors and actresses were low. Even Zhang Jinlai who starred as the Monkey King and Ma Dehua who acted as Xuanzang's disciple Zhu Bajie, received only 80 yuan (about 11.6 U.S. dollars) for each episode.

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