This is a relic that moves. Paper-cut animation doesn't age, it just sits differently in your chest, each frame a shadow puppet show that knows exactly how to make you laugh without apology. Zhu Bajie's greed is the joke and the entire moral: a pig monk steals a watermelon in the desert and the film doesn't blink or lecture. Watching it now feels like finding a lost letter from cinema itself, something handmade and unashamed in ways modern animation forgot how to be.

On their pilgrimage to the West, Tang Sanzang, Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie stop to rest in a desert, thirsty and worn out. They enter a temple they believe is abandoned. Zhu Bajie keeps complaining about his aching stomach, so Sun Wukong goes off to look for food and warns him not to slack. Soon Zhu Bajie comes across an enormous watermelon and cuts it into four pieces to share. After finishing the biggest slice, he cannot stop himself and eats the rest. Sun Wukong catches him in the act and decides to punish him with magic. This short comedy adventure film is among the earliest Chinese works made with paper-cut animation.